MAP Cleanup Tools

I was asked to post a little something on the drawing clean up tools in MAP so here goes.
First what are they and what can they do. Well just as the name says they can “Clean up” your drawing but if not used right can also mess up a drawing just as easy. The thing you have to remember is the tools are not designed as a one step, push the button tool and magic happens. Not all of the options can be selected at once. I’ll start with the basic one first “Delete Duplicates”. This seems to be everyone’s favorite that does basic mapping or plain CAD in MAP and is the one those users brag about to the “vanilla” users.
Starting with the first dialog it allows you to filter out the object to run the cleanup on either bylayer or feature class if those are in the dwg. You can also use the select method to get only a limited number of objects by selecting just those objects by the standard AutoCAD section method. After you selected the items for cleanup and checked the “Delete Duplicates” from the “Cleanup Actions” you can set a tolerance or other parameters. The tolerance will take into account how close those objects are to each other to delete. The rule to follow here is start with a small tolerance and work your way up to a larger one each time. Setting too large of a tolerance may delete more than you need. The next thing you need to do is select the type of object you want the cleanup to act on. The options are Linear Objects (Lines & Plines), Points, Blocks, Text, and Mtext. You also have options for the rotation of the object and the “Z” coordinates of those objects. If all you need to clean up is text then just select the “TEXT” and MAP will not have to look at all the lines and other types of objects in the map. Hint it will run a little faster and your chances of a crash will be less when you select just the ones you need.
The other option in the “Cleanup Action dialog is the “Interactive” option. This option checked allows you to see each error before it is acted on by MAP.
The next dialog allows you to select the method to use on the action you selected. You can modify the objects, retain the original object and create a new object on a different layer, or create all new objects on a new layer. The second part to this dialog converting the objects to another type of object, lines to polylines for example. If you want all the lines that you selected in the cleanup selection then you would select “Lines to Polylines” and the cleanup will convert the lines for you.
If you select the “interactive” option in the “Cleanup Action” you are given the chance to set the type of marker to use for the errors AutoCAD MAP finds in the cleanup. This can be helpful if you select more than one cleanup action by. If you did not select interactive then this dialog is grayed out and the cleanup is ran with MAP fixing the errors automatically.
I’ll post another entry on more to this cleanup tool as time allows but it gives you a lot more “power” to cleanup and delete duplicated objects than the Express Tool “OverKill”.

Want those ESRI symbols in your AutoCAD MAP

How many times have you wished the point symbols in the ArcGIS were in AutoCAD MAP. Well they can be with a little work. The symbols in ESRI are nothing but fonts so all you need to do is find out what font file they are in. Go into the properties for the point in ArcMAP and it tells you. In AutoCAD create mtext and import that font using the windows MapChar dialog. Now explode the mtext to lines and arcs or plines. Clean it up a little if needed and create a block from the geometry. Now when you import a ESRI shape file into MAP use that block as the point symbol.
Note: The 3D and the bmp, the ones with color, symbols are not fonts so this tip will not work for them.

The World is not Flat

The world is not flat, so why are your maps? I expect that to be asked to a lot more mappers in the next couple of years. Google Earth is 3D so why not the maps that we make. I mean don't we provide the details for developers to show where our assets are at. Just the other day I got in a site plan for a new "project" being build in our service area. They wanted us to show where our electrical lines and poles were at so their engineers could design the services going into the new building. But what happens when those designers start using 3D to their fullest and provide 3D models to the clients. The client may want to know if those same power lines with all the equipment hanging off them will block the view of the half million dollar logo on the side of the building. Will the view from the bosses window be blocked by an ugly rust color steel power pole? Sure we can give them a good look from an airplane flying over head but that's it. It's time for 3D mapping to and for users to make use of it.