CADcaster

The new version is on it’s way to a desk near you. So lets look what is new. First it has all the features of AutoCAD 2010, that includes the new freeform modeling tools and the parametric tools. Using them in a Map/GIS environment is another story but if you want to “design” 3D models you can.

The first thing you may notice is Map3D 2010 is ribbon based with two new workspaces. A tool base ribbon and a task based ribbon.

Now if you have not used the ribbons in any other application or used them in AutoCAD before it takes a little extra work to get used to them over menu driven interfaces. The big change to these in 2010 version is a new context-sensitive ribbon.

With the context-sensitivity ribbons a new tab will display depending on the object(s) you may have selected. It makes it easier with most of the tools/commands right there instead of trying to hunt down the location on the ribbon.

Next item you may notice is the Survey tab on the task pane.

The Survey Extension from 2009 is now part of the task pane and allows you to import survey points from a number of different ASCII point data files and supports LandXML data. You will be able to import points and create different point groups from the data based on the attributes. 

The next new feature is creating an overlay with feature data. Prior to this if we needed to do an overlay it had to be with standard AutoCAD objects then  create a topology, which always took some drawing cleanup to complete a correct topology. Now users can do 7 different types of overlays with data from FDO sources.

With the new overlay feature and the existing buffer feature Map3D users can do just about any type of analysis they need to on a regular day to day operation.

Speaking of day to day operations, the next new feature may be of use. The new Windows Work Flow Framework may be an answer to all those repetitive tasks.

Any one that tried to use the Macro-recorder in 2009 found out that it did not work with FDO features, this not only works on FDO but use the Window Workflow Foundation to include tasks or activities that can be done outside AutoCAD. So far there is little documentation on using it but the nerds that like to get under the hood and tinker should be able to get some nice little activities created with it.

Another new feature is one that a lot of CAD users have been wishing for since the data connect days. A simple way to view the attributes from the connected features with out opening the data tables.  It’s included in the property palette now. That’s right, instead of getting just “Mapbulkfeature” in the property palette when you have a feature selected you get all the attributes with that feature.

Not only is it viewable you can edit the values also. Select multiple features and change the attributes value at one time is now a possible task.

Those are a few of the new features that a lot of users can take to the boss and say it was worth the upgrade. A few others improvements are the bulk copy has been enhanced and improved on, a few new options with the COGO tools, a couple new data providers, a better raster reprojection, support for 64 bit systems and Citrix XenApp 5.0. The last new feature I will post about it the Geographic location tool. In 2009 version you most likely seen the GeoMarker or what some call the “wagon wheel” or “pizza” when you assigned a coordinate system to your map. That is a standard AutoCAD feature the allows non-map users to get a geographical location  from a number of places like Google Earth or just by entering a Lat/Lon, well now we can use that location to insert the drawings into our map with out having to move or scale it. In other words if you get a drawing of a building from an standard AutoCAD user and they provided the geo location in the drawing then when we bring that building into our map it falls right into place instead of at 0,0,0.