Community
Civil 3D Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Civil 3D Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular AutoCAD Civil 3D topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Off Topic: Vicinity Maps

17 REPLIES 17
SOLVED
Reply
Message 1 of 18
sakka252
8465 Views, 17 Replies

Off Topic: Vicinity Maps

Where does everyone get their Vicinity Maps for their plans?  I have been using Google Maps or Bing, but the road names are really too small.  

 

Thanks

17 REPLIES 17
Message 2 of 18

Don't know about other states but the Florida DOT provides SID aerial photos and their county maps (in dgn and pdf format) on their Survey & Mapping webside for free in electronic format (or you can order prints for a charge).

Mike Robertson
FL. Dept. of Transportation
CADD Applications Developer
Message 3 of 18
balloonsrise
in reply to: sakka252

We have a Microstation file that I converted to cad format which is from the county. It has all the roads, road names, lakes, rivers etc. as linework. Most of our work is done in county so I just open up that file, copy out the linework I need, put this in model space, scale it down by x.005, and in paperspace, i set it with a viewport.

Civil 3D 2013
Windows 7 64-bit
Inteel 2.40 GHz 8 GB RAM
Dell T7600
Message 4 of 18
AdammReilly
in reply to: sakka252

In Texas, we have a few sites that offer the TxDOT dgn files for the centerlines of the roads, per county.

I downloaded all the counties that we work in, imported them into seperate files and attached them to a master file, which I then use with the Map commands to query in the roads around our project site. The roads have object data assigned to them, so I can then Annotate them with the Map commands.

Sometimes a surveyor doesn't use a coordinate system, them I have to resort to Google Earth, but only for finding the site, which I then import the google data so that I can query around that area with the Map commands.

Adam Reilly

Dell Precision 55400
Windows 10 Pro
Intel Xeon E-2276M 2.80GHz, 64bit
NVidia Quadro T2000 Mobile/Max-Q


LinkedIn | Twitter


Group Leader badge


Austin CADD User Group


LinkedIn | Discord

Message 5 of 18
balloonsrise
in reply to: AdammReilly

Adam, I am also in Texas. Where did you find the dgn's for other county's? 

Civil 3D 2013
Windows 7 64-bit
Inteel 2.40 GHz 8 GB RAM
Dell T7600
Message 6 of 18
sakka252
in reply to: AdammReilly

Thanks guys!  GDOT doesn't seem to have anything but PDFs (at least all I found in my first search).  Hopefully I can find some CAD files.  

 

Unfortunately, the PDFs they do have are a not all up to date.  The PDF they have for the job I am working on right now is just a little out of date, 1996.

Message 7 of 18
ACADuser
in reply to: sakka252

I typically create them using ArcMap then export to an image and attach to my drawings.  Most of the same data formats can be used by Civil 3D since Map3D is built-in.  See below for a few data sources that I found using Google.

 

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2009/tgrshp2009.html

 

See the link for "Georgia Highway Shapefile" on this page;

http://www.mapcruzin.com/free-united-states-shapefiles/free-georgia-arcgis-maps-shapefiles.htm

 

 

ACADuser
Civil 3D 2018, Raster Design 2018
Windows 7 Enterprise
Dell Precision 5810 Workstation
Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3 @ 3.70GHz
32GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro K2200 4 GB GDDR5
DUAL 27" Dell UltraSharp U2713HM
Message 8 of 18
Neilw_05
in reply to: ACADuser

For maps that don't require a lot of detail I use Mapquest. The amount of detail varies with zoom scale so you can make a series of maps with varying detail to get you to the site. I use a screen capture utility to capture the maps to our local server. You can always edit the captures to add notes, trace a route and so forth or you can do the markups in Autocad.

 

Just type in the address of the site and you get a decent map that's ready to go.

Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 9 of 18

Something to keep in mind for almost all mapping sites, their copyright and usage regulations forbid there use for derivative works without permssion and/or credits unless for personal usage. (That's one of the differences between Google Earth & Google Earth Pro).

 

Here are a few usage links:

http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21422

http://www.mapquest.com/terms-of-use

 

Have seen this come up on some larger projects and design firms.

 

Mike Robertson
FL. Dept. of Transportation
CADD Applications Developer
Message 10 of 18

Thank you for pointing out that important caveat Michael.

Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 11 of 18
sakka252
in reply to: Neilw_05

I researched this more, there seems to be some discrepancies in the Google Permissions.

 

See this page first

http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/pro_features.html

note the FAQs " Can I use the Google Earth imagery in my presentations, reports, website, etc.?" and "Do I need the Pro version?"

 

Those answers lead me to believe, like Michael stated, Earth Pro is required to use the imagery.  However, there is no mention of using Earth Pro exclusively in the Geo Permissions.  Click on the Geo Permissions link http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html#fairuse in the first question, and scroll down to the "Print" section there is a subsection titled "Basis for contractors' or environmental consultants' reports:"  I believe civil engineers would fall under this category.  

 

It seems as if the Geo Permissions state, if you site the image as described you can use them.

 

What do you guys think?

 

I want to be legit, and have no problem purchasing Earth Pro, but it seems unclear whether or not we are required to do so simply for vicinity and aerial images.

Message 12 of 18

If you're "Map" savvy, you can access the US 2009 Census information for free from the geocommunities GIS Data Depot (GeoComm.com) and use the display manager to label street names at varying scales.  I would use this second to any DOT-based information - the DOT's usually give more information on functional class (local/county/state) versus the census lines.  From the Census data, look for "all edges" and then you want to get the data with "roadflg=Y" so you don't get the streams/rivers/railroads, and such.  Then you just have to label the road features based on the field "FULLNAME"

 

You can also bring in free Digital Orthophotos from the national seamless map server, 1m resolution (typically) directly into C3D.

 

I'd be happy to show anyone interested - toddhATctcivilDOTcom.

Message 13 of 18

Since no one mentioned it, don't forget that with C3D we can use WMS (Web Mapping Services). This allows you to connect to a service that has pre-made base maps and display them in your drawing. There are thousands of such servers out there. ESRI hosts several and you can connect to the National Map as well. Google Earth and Google Maps may have services now but I don't know if they impose restrictions on thier use.

 

The downside is the graphics are not embedded in your drawing so if you lose connection to the service the maps will not load. Still you could use a capture utility to create an image and insert that. Once you find a service that you like you will always have ready access to vicinity maps.

Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 14 of 18
stacy.dunn
in reply to: balloonsrise

The TxDOT urban files (county road maps), in DGN format from the TNRIS website.

 

http://www.tnris.state.tx.us/datadownload/download.jsp

 

The site has a ton of other free data.

Stacy Dunn
Message 15 of 18
Murph_Map
in reply to: sakka252

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a website that subscription members could log on to, zoom to the area they needed then do a capture to paste that image right into their project?

 

Hint-hint....... you need anyone to oversee that project? 

Murph
Supporting the troops daily.
Message 16 of 18
Neilw_05
in reply to: Murph_Map

Why limit it to a subscription service? Can we have a screen capture tool to bring any image right into our dwg? How about capturing WMS images?

Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 17 of 18
jcorley
in reply to: Neilw_05

I have a CAD file with parcel lines for Escambia & Santa Rosa counties here in NW Florida. (and I will share it)
When I have to do an area either on the edges or out of the area I use USGS Quadrangle maps, not potential copyright issues. (Link here:       http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/index.html    ) - the site has an archive that goes back over 100 years in some areas, 1940s in most.

Message 18 of 18
pperales2
in reply to: sakka252

I think TIGER provides road layers or shapefiles. I think that is where I got mine.

 

https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-geodatabase-file.html

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Rail Community


Autodesk Design & Make Report