Adding an FDO Provider

While on support yesterday, a client asked how he could add a different source of map data that wasn’t currently available.  Civil 3D or Map 3D makes it possible to add any of the FDO providers that are available.  Here are the following steps to add a provider:

1.       Determine the provider you will need.  In my client’s case, he needed OGR.

2.       Download the provider FDO Provider  I downloaded version 3.5.0.

3.       Be sure to download the correct version (32/64 bit). 

4.       The formats of the provider files have an extension of .tar and .gz.  You may need to download a utility to extract the .dll file from the file.

5.       Upon, extracting the .dll file, you will need to paste it in the following location:  C:\Program File\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011\FDO\BIN

6.       Also in this file location, you will find a providers.xml file.  You will need to add the following

text string to the end of the file:

<FeatureProvider>

  <Name>OSGeo.OGR.3.5</Name>

  <DisplayName>OSGeo FDO Provider for OGR </DisplayName>

  <Description>OGR Provider</Description>

  <IsManaged>False</IsManaged>

  <Version>3.5.0.0</Version>

  <FeatureDataObjectsVersion>3.5.0.0</FeatureDataObjectsVersion>

  <LibraryPath>OGRProvider.dll</LibraryPath>

</FeatureProvider>

7.       Save the edited version.  Note, it is not a bad idea to make a copy of the original providers.xml file in case an error is made.

8.       Open up Civil 3D, and go to Data Connect, you should see OGR like the image below:

9.       Finally, put in the full path to your file, including the file name under Data Source, and connect to your data.