StayGeo

In my previous post I discussed about the issues faced in CAD to GIS conversion when using basic utilities of ArcGIS. In this post I will discuss the route taken by me to convert a set of DWG files to SHP format. If you are working with a data pertaining to a large area or data with a large number of layers Data Interoperability extension for ArcGIS becomes very essential. While Data Interoperability can handle nearly 100 data formats, FME Desktop on which Data Interoperability is based on can handle 300+ formats. Whatever conversion you need these software have an answer - cad to gis (shp, geodatabase, kml , 3d pdf etc.)

Scenario: Since times immemorial CAD drawings have been used in all kinds of Civil Engineering works. CAD offered lot of advantages to a user - to work on large amount of data in less time, easy storage and retrieval, more accuracy, easy editing, options to duplicate and so on. Only thing CAD drawings lacked is intelligence. By this I mean, each CAD entity is not connected to another one at all. If there is one highway and another village road, both are placed in different layers and their intersection can be seen but cannot be used for analysis like traffic flow. As they aren't connected if highway is moved other road stays where it is. On the other hand GIS which came in at a later stage did not have these disadvantages. GIS too organized data in layers, but layers possessed intelligence. There was connectivity between elements and analysis could be easily carried out. To add more, GIS came along with facility to define the geographic location(Nowadays, even AutoCAD has this fa...