Monday, October 29, 2012

Civil 3D Points to GIS

A question that has come up a few times in last month, is how take Civil 3D points and convert them into a shp file that can be viewed in GIS with attributed data.  As you can see from the capture below, I have a drawing with a group of Civil 3D points.


The first thing that we need to do is convert the Civil 3D points to standard blocks with attributes.  To accomplish this, I will use the AeccConvertPointsToSdskPoints command.  As you can see below, we now have point blocks.  Before I convert the data into shp format, I will get rid of the Civil 3D points in the drawing now that we have blocks.


To convert the block data into a usable shp format, we can use the mapexport command.


After selecting the file name and shp file format, we will select point for object type.


We will next flip to the data tab, and choose the select attributes option.


Here is where we can select what attributes we want to be stored in the shp file.  In our case, we will select elev, point, and desc.


Now that the file has been created, we can send this to our client our local municipality for their use.  To give an idea of what you will be sending, I will bring the file into Civil 3D using the data connect to bring in the shp file. As you see in the capture below, I have chosen to add the shp connection and selected the shp file previously created.


After connecting and adding to map the shp file, you can see the following.


I will then choose the table option to display the data that was generated in the shp file.



Here is the table with the corresponding data we chose to export with the shp file.  This is what others who plan on using this shp file in other programs should see.