Geospatial World

Late last week Autodesk released a hotfix for the mapexport/mapimport commands. We have had some clients report sporatic problems with importing and exporting SHP files, but usually we were unable to re-produce the problems locally. This hotfix addresses some specific issues with respect to polygons, but this alos might address other problems people have been reporting. Download the hotifx from the link above, and as always, would like to hear if this has resolved some of your problems... or not... Take Care Warren M

If you are looking for ways of improving the performance of your MapGuide applications, or just looking for tweaks and best practices, be sure to check out the MapGuide Best Practices Wiki site for some great information! I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas, and a great holiday season. Take care, Warren M

Wow, AU 2008 is wrapping up with the final sessions as I write this post. It has been a great week of learning, meeting new people, and seeing some exciting new technologies. My class yesterday was attended by 62 people, and went fantastic. There were some great questions asked, and some very positive feedback was given. Thank you to all who attended. Now for an extra day of R'n'R in Vegas, and then on the road again next week for the IMAGINiT Western Canadian Geospatial Roadshow in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. Take Care Warren

Well, day one sessions are complete, and it was a great 1st day. My co-presentaion in the Analyze This! class went great with some good feedback. The ADN conference yesterday was quite informative, with information provided on the direction of many of the Autodesk products. Unfortunately, I can't say anything about that due to NDA! :-) Take Care, Warren

Well, we're down the the final week before AU 2008.  I am getting extremely excited now.  My presentation is complete, and I'm just ensuring I've covered all of the required content and final tweaks.   For those attending AU this year, I will also be co-presenting again with Mike Schlosser in the  Analyze This! How to use AutoCAD® Map 3D for Geospatial Analysis ! So be sure to check out this class as well! If you have checked out my blog and are going to be at AU, please drop by and hi! Take Care, Warren See you in 7 days!

If you enjoy being on the cutting edge, and making a difference in the development and direction of software that you use everyday, you should check out the Autodesk MyFeedback site, and consider sigining up as a beta tester. Side note: Wow, AU is coming up quick!  I've been busy finalizing my presentation and working out the kinks, and starting to get excited now... Warren M Take care, AU in 17 days

Finally... There is an Update (Service Pack) available for MapGuide Enterprise 2009 which should address many issues people have been experiencing.  There are actually 3 downloads available:  Server Update Webserver Extensions Update MapGuide Studio Update General information can be found here . Take care, Warren M AU 40 days and counting...

So I figured it was time to get SQL Server 2008 Spatial up and running on my machine.  After installing a few pre-requisites (Windows PowerShell, MS Installer 4.5, etc) I was able to upgrade my current SQL Server 2005 Express, to SQL Server 2008 Express. The install went fairly smoothly with the expcetion of not installing the SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE).  After a quick Google search it was apparent this was a common problem, and you simply needed to re-run the install and choose to install the Management Tools - Basic (which btw, I did not recall seeing during the original upgrade, so I'm not sure if this is by design or not?) Once SSMSE was installed I fired up Map 2009, and Bulk Copied some data from a previous SQL Server Schema (non-spatial), and was able to create a non FDO schema and dumped some data into it. I was pleasantly surprised whn I popped back into SSMSE and found the Spatial Results tab on one of the tables I selected.  This tab provides a nice gra...

For those who have installed the Survey Toolkit for Map 3D you might have noticed that when you use the '3D Surface' command that the raster is generated, but it does not get added to the Display Manager.  If you check the Data Connect window, you will see that the Raster is actually connected, it's just not added to the drawing.  The following link provides a hotfix to address this issue:  Survey Toolkit Add Layer Hot Fix Take care, Warren M AU in 48 days

I was recently working with a client who was generating Map 3D surfaces from a SHP point file DEM.   These SHP files were based on the Canadian NTS sheets, and as such it took 4 sheets to cover the area they were working with.   There was a problem once all of the raster surfaces were put together. As you can see from the image, there were resulting ‘gaps’ between the 4 surfaces.    This is likely happening because the dem points do not form a uniform boundary at the edges defined by the NTS sheets.    So, how can we resolve this?   I thought what if we could merge the 4 separate SHP files into a single SHP file?   How might I do this without any Arc* tools?   I suppose one option would be to import all of the SHP files into Map, and then export them out as a single SHP file.   But…   that’s too much work, and the datasets might be too big to bring all of this into Map.    So, off to trusty ‘ol Google and search for some information on merging SHP files.   Well, wasn’t I surprised wh...

Earlier this week at the FOSS4G conference taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, Autodesk announced the availability of 2 new FDO Providers through the subscription program: Autodesk FDO Provider for GE Smallworld and Autodesk FDO Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 . “The latest FDO Providers allow customers to take advantage of the native support for additional spatial data formats -- and let users more easily access, view, edit and analyze data -- within Autodesk geospatial software.” Take Care, Warren AU in 59 days

While I have been unable to find any direct information from the Microsoft website regarding a lack of support for arc segments in the new SQL Server 2008 Spatial, I did find a few posts on the Microsoft Tech Forums, and one specifically from Isaac Kunen stating that arcs are not supported, and are a high priority item for the next release. Personnaly, I think this a deal-breaker for many organizations, and I believe it would be in Microsoft's best interest to address this shortcoming sooner, rather than later. Here ia another great comparison document that cross compares  SQL Server 2008 Spatial, PostgreSQL/PostGIS 1.3-1.4, MySQL 5-6 Take Care, Warren AU in 60 days

So, I was playing around with some DEMs and the Create Contour Layer functionality in Map 3D the other day... When I noticed something 'odd'... Can you see the oddity from the screen capture of the Data Table Window below? In case you didn't notice, the Data Table Window is only reporting one record? What the? I know there are hundreds of contours in this resulting SDF, so why is it only showing 1 record? Well after performing a reality check with a fellow Map enthusiast Nicole Jung (who btw is also instructing at AU this year, so be sure to check out her class: GS304-1P Express yourself! Using the Expression Builder in AutoCAD® Map 3D 2009 and Autodesk MapGuide® Enterprise 2009! ) we investigated this for a bit and realized that there seems to be a little anomaly occurring with the refreshing of the Data Window for these SDFs generated via Generate Contours command. I found that if I toggled between Filtered and un-filtered Feature Classes the reocrds would show up... An...

One of the big problems (at least for me and many of our clients) with the initial release of Map 3D 2009 was that it would not allow you to create a theme based on a column from a joined datasource.  The problem was that the joined columns were just no t shown in the UI.  However... it would appear that this issue has been addressed in the latest map update . As you can see from the screen captures below, the joined columns are now available in the Property dropdown list, and the Expression Builder Property list.   For those who do not know how to create a join, some simple instructions are: Connect to both datasources and add to the map any required features.  In the sample image we've connected to and added to the map the Hydrants SDF for the point features, and made an ODBC connection to an Access database that contains more details for the Hydrants In the Display Manger, right-click on the datasource (Hydrants) that you want to create a join on and select Create Join.   In the...

Late last week Autodesk released an Update for Map 2009. The Update, or Service Pack, can be downloaded here . Numerous issues are addressed in this SP, and I would suggest anyone using Map 3D 2009 should probably download and install this. You can use the link above to download and install, or use the Communication Center to install: After the install is complete you can check the Product Information (Help > About AutoCAD Map 3D > Product Information) to ensure the update was successful: Some issues that I have personal experience with are problems with using FDO and 3D objects. These were quite flaky and un-stable, and was informed by Autodesk that this is supposed to be addressed in this service pack. The Join problem of not showing joined properties in the Expression Builder is supposed to be resolved as well... I have yet to verify this. Take care, Warren AU 2008 in 86 days...

Well we've been hearing about it ( Google Chrome ) for a while, and it's now available, so I thought I would install it and see what the fuss is about. Seems nice enough... really quick, thin... But most importantly is that a MapGuide site shows up just fine using Chrome: Although I did notice that it doesn't seem to format XML for display... This is the result of a MapGuide MapAgent query:

Have you ever created labels from a point feature set in AutoCAD Map? If so, you probably also turned off the display of the point symbol. So, have you then ever tried to ‘select’ the label graphically? You can’t! One workaround would be to leave the point display turned on most of the time, which would allow you to select it, and then turn it off for printing. This works… but that requires you to remember to turn it off… Another option is to turn on the point display, but set the color to ACI 255, which should plot as transparent, or invisible. On a white background you don’t ‘see’ the point, but can still select it by picking beside the text. To aid in the ability to select the text you can even increase the size of the point On a black (or any other color) background, you can see the point just fine, but it shouldn’t print out.

Finally!!! My two passions have been combined... Rock Music, and anything Geospatial. Rockin’ Remote Sensing: Aerotec Provides 3D LIDAR Models for Ground-Breaking Music Video While I personally am not a huge Radiohead fan, I don't think anybody can deny that the band is always willing to try new things. From releasing their latest album over the web, to creating a music video without any cameras or lights. Yes, no cameras, no lights... all 'Data'. Very cool! Check it out at: http://code.google.com/radiohead

It was great to recieve the acceptance email from the AU regading my proposal to instruct a class this year. The title of the class is: GS310-2 From AutoCAD® Map 3D® to Autodesk MapGuide® in 3 Simple Steps: Connect, Stylize, Publish Autodesk University is an awesome experience, and I recommend it to anybody that works with the wide variety of Autodesk products. Stay tuned to the AU site for class and lab listings.

Welcome to my musings! I have been thinking about starting a blog for some time now, and figure now is as good a time as ever. My name is Warren Medernach, and I am an 'anti' computer geek who has a passion for GIS, all things Geospatial and web mapping technologies in general. This blog is going to contain information related to the Geospatial industry and Autodesk products, and hopefully it can contribute to this rapidly growing industry. Warren