Live Maps Tool Workflow in A2014 & Geo Maps Observations.

[devon.middleditch]

Hi, Looking for some guidance on how to get the live maps to work correctly.

To me & our civil designers, the tool feels like it's been built very separate to AutoCAD in a way where it's not logical in how it defines a location & links to a geo-referenced location.

The issue is that when you start the tool, you search for a street & apply a GIS coord system etc., but after locating this, we are at a loss to why AutoCAD then requires you to "pick a point" & "Nth direction" in the drawing space (the modelspace coords them become irrelevant or incorrect).

From our point of view (which is up for discussion), once you search your location/street etc AutoCAD should automatically display the map in the correct location/coords in modelspace without any user input? in line with the coords system you selected within the geo-referencing tool.

It feels like the tool is actually very separate to AutoCAD & in no way linked to the model space coord system, thus not accurate as you can't pick a point in modelspace inch perfect.

Before this tool was in Acad, we have always received our survey data in the correct GIS coord system for our geo location & place this into modelspace at the correct coords & continued our design from there (in the correct place in space). This would be in Easting’s & Northings (not minutes/seconds/degrees as is the only option to manually input from the tool)

Unless we are missing something (which is what i'm hoping), it feels like the new Geo Maps tool is significantly underestimating the link between the GIS coords system & the AutoCAD modelspace coords (which should be the same).

We feel the tool should just place a map in modelspace at the correct MS coords which mirror the chosed GIS grid system, from there, you start xref'ing in your survey & progress your design - very simply & logical (to us at least).

Hopefully we are just looking at this from the wrong angle & one of you can point us in the right direction.

Additionally, - another observation - why did Autodesk deploy this tool & remove the function to print the drawing with the map imagery displaying? Makes it pretty much useless for civil projects if this is the case.

Any thoughts,assistance is very much appreciated.

Cheers.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> [...] we are at a loss to why AutoCAD then requires you to "pick a point" & "Nth direction" in the drawing space

This new function does the following steps (with as few words as possible, so reduced to make it easier to understand):

a) let you search for a position in the world, either you use pan and zoom in the map (or input an adress like country/city/street/number) to define an absolute point stored as latitude/longitude. This point is a point on the world map.

b) open a drawing with any local coordinates, e.g. an architecture model drawn close to X/Y = 0/0. Now you set the point from a) to match to a specific position in the architects plan and you show the direction to north in the architects plan.

With other words as a sample:

The local (archtiects) position 0,0 (e.g. lower left corner of the parcel) equals to the world position N48.2213,E15.7603 (in lat long) and the architects plan is rotated about 32.675 degrees from the absolute north on the world.

(I missed here the assignment of a coordinate system and the units that might add pages of description)

>> From our point of view (which is up for discussion), once you search your location/street etc AutoCAD

>> should automatically display the map in the correct location/coords in modelspace without any user input?

>> in line with the coords system you selected within the geo-referencing tool.

That is true as long as your drawing has it's own coordinate system (geographic projection system) assigned. But that is only an option for AutoCAD Map3D or AutoCAD Civil3D, you can't assign that using plain AutoCAD.

If you have Map3D or Civil3D then look to command _ADESETCRDSYS, choose the system you need and start the new functionality via _GEOPOSITION afterwards. In that case you'll recognize that no destination point is asked for,

Hope that makes it more clear! - alfred -

[jggerth1]

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@devon.middleditch wrote:

Hi, Looking for some guidance on how to get the live maps to work correctly.

To me & our civil designers, the tool feels like it's been built very separate to AutoCAD in a way where it's not logical in how it defines a location & links to a geo-referenced location.

... 

Hopefully we are just looking at this from the wrong angle & one of you can point us in the right direction.

Additionally, - another observation - why did Autodesk deploy this tool & remove the function to print the drawing with the map imagery displaying? Makes it pretty much useless for civil projects if this is the case.

Any thoughts,assistance is very much appreciated.

Cheers.

---

I'll chime in, because you _are_ looking at this from the wrong angle.  From a civil designers perspective, this is a useless feature.  Accuracy and reliability are nowhere near adequate for civil design, mapping, gis, etc.  The margin of error on the imagery is wildly variable, and the projection of the imagery is very simplistic.    That makes sense, since the source imagery is Bing Maps, and their stuff was not developed or designed to anything at all like survey level accuracy.  It was designed to look pretty in a web browser, and give people something to see thats' approximately close to what is (or used to be!!) in the area.  Accuracy of the maps is adequate for an in-car GPS unit traveling at 88 kph, or an older hand-help consumer grade GPS unit useful for geocaching.

If you think of vanilla autocad geolocation as a very rough approximation - adequate maybe for a sun study - and the imagery from LiveMaps as untrustworthy, then you are looking at it from the correct angle for a civil designer.

What it can be helpful for (in the civil world)  is in preliminary planning.  the work before the work that happens at the 30000 ft level.    Is the proposed job site more ore less than x many miles from the river?  Which way is the town landfill?  It's handy to asnwer broad questions, simple questions, and help steer the site investigation away from obvious problems.

Bottom line is if you are doing civil, then you need to be using tools that can properly locate georeferenced imagery on a known coordinate system.  that could be Map3d, civil3D. dotsoft's map stuff, or similar.  Not Livemaps, google maps, or their ilk.

Re: the second part about printing -- it's simply that Autodesk's negotiators failed to offer Microsoft enough money to enable printing the imagery.  In a way that's a good thing - since you can't use untrustworthy material in a conract document, you're a little bit safer from the liability that would result from relying on known unreliable imagery.

[neilyj666]

...although there are enough "weasel words" disclaimers put on drawings and in contracts to allow the author to escape liability...:)

[devon.middleditch]

Hi & thanks for the reply’s.

I guess from our civil designer’s point of view, this tool is useless then. If Autodesk wanted a tool which Architects can use (because they stick everything at 0,0), then thats fine, but it should go in Revit, not AutoCAD. We use real coords here!

Our civil designs are created in 12D, MX & Civil 3D & everything is in the correct coords relative to our local geographical grid system (AMG). This tool won't align with this & picking a "round-a-bout" point is not even close to correct for CAD.

I understand what you mention about not being 100% accurate, however it would at least be nice if the tool just placed a map around the street/town etc. you searched for & from there you could clip it & reference in your survey or civil design etc in the correct place in space.

To my users, this tool seems overly complex for a result which is never going to be usable in the real-world.

Autodesk - this is disappointing implementation of a tool which had so much potential. There is no need to dumb down a tool to the point that it's useless & sort-of mimics web maps. Hopefully this is fixed before 2015.

[neilyj666]

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@devon.middleditch wrote:

Hi & thanks for the reply’s.

I guess from our civil designer’s point of view, this tool is useless then. If Autodesk wanted a tool which Architects can use (because they stick everything at 0,0), then thats fine, but it should go in Revit, not AutoCAD. We use real coords here!

Our civil designs are created in 12D, MX & Civil 3D & everything is in the correct coords relative to our local geographical grid system (AMG). This tool won't align with this & picking a "round-a-bout" point is not even close to correct for CAD.

I understand what you mention about not being 100% accurate, however it would at least be nice if the tool just placed a map around the street/town etc. you searched for & from there you could clip it & reference in your survey or civil design etc in the correct place in space.

To my users, this tool seems overly complex for a result which is never going to be usable in the real-world.

Autodesk - this is disappointing implementation of a tool which had so much potential. There is no need to dumb down a tool to the point that it's useless & sort-of mimics web maps. Hopefully this is fixed before 2015.

---

...wouldn't hold my breath on this....

[jggerth1]

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@devon.middleditch wrote:

Hi & thanks for the reply’s.

I guess from our civil designer’s point of view, this tool is useless then. If Autodesk wanted a tool which Architects can use (because they stick everything at 0,0), then thats fine, but it should go in Revit, not AutoCAD. We use real coords here!

Our civil designs are created in 12D, MX & Civil 3D & everything is in the correct coords relative to our local geographical grid system (AMG). This tool won't align with this & picking a "round-a-bout" point is not even close to correct for CAD.

I understand what you mention about not being 100% accurate, however it would at least be nice if the tool just placed a map around the street/town etc. you searched for & from there you could clip it & reference in your survey or civil design etc in the correct place in space.

To my users, this tool seems overly complex for a result which is never going to be usable in the real-world.

Autodesk - this is disappointing implementation of a tool which had so much potential. There is no need to dumb down a tool to the point that it's useless & sort-of mimics web maps. Hopefully this is fixed before 2015.

---

If you've got Civil3D - you already have a 'better' set of tools for incorporating aerial imagery into construction drawings -- you are not the target market for Live Maps.  Between MapIInsert and FDO Raster, the accuracy available to you now is only limited by what you are willing to do with those and where / how you can source your imagery, whether NASA public domain satellitephotography or bespoke aerials.

As a civil user, you can take advantage Live Maps for planning purposes or other preliminary purposes, and it can be useful during the design process as a visual guide when 'real' georeferenced aerials are not available.

As a civil person, theres' a lot in Acad over the past few years that is pretty much irrelevant to my work -- Press Pull, ModelDocs, Navvcube, Visualstyles, etc etc etc.  For a manufacturing widgets person, live maps is equally irrelevant.  The key is to recognize that AutoCAD covers a huge spectrum of use-cases, and for us as users to realize the benefits of those featurs that are useable in our work processes, and ignore those that aren't.

After all,if I was directing the development priorities of the AutoCAD team, the product would look very different - and none of the architect or widget people would be happy with what was shipoped, but it would be a dam site faster 

[dgorsman]

Almost wish we had the double-kudos back.  ALMOST.  If you had your way with AutoCAD, there would be a horde of angry pipers at your door with torches (we'd turn off your gas pipelines first - we're angry, but safety concious).

[jggerth1]

nothing against pipers.  ...  circa R11 I wrote a 2d paarametric fitting & pipe program that included 98 percent of the American Pipe Manual DIP componenets, alogn with a bunch of additional items from my Clough book.    Water/wastewater - not petrochem so not nearly to the level you guys need these days.  but if i had a penny for every fitting, pipe, or valve that was placed using it, I'd have retired a decade ago.

(one thing I would insist on if i were boss for a day, would be fixing the mostly useless adaptive grid to to understand and work with isometric snap style for risers -- that's **** near the only place I've ever found a use for Grid.)

[TerryDotson]

... at a loss to why AutoCAD then requires you to "pick a point" & "Nth direction" in the drawing ...

I understand how you feel.  My terms after experimenting with it was "an excellent idea poorly implemented".