Hi! My background is in architectural drafting/CAD, and I am being nudged into GIS at my firm. I have a lot of AutoCAD experience, so going though the Map3D tutorials was not a problem...but those tutorials don't answer some BASIC questions I have.
#1- When starting a new map from scratch, what should I set the units to? Should they stay at decimal? Engineering? Architectural? Any recommendations for changes to the Standard Settings before I start drawing?
#2- should I assign a Coordinate system immedately before drawing, or can I do it afterwards, and then "move" the geometry to the correct coordinates?
#3- When I draw, should everything be done in inches, as Civil Drafters do? Or should I be working in Feet, and real world sizes; this is what our County GIS people want when we submit drawings to them in the future.
#4- Where can I get some georeferenced photos of my region? I understand that if a coordinate system is set and if the photos are georeferenced that they should Automatically "snap" into place for easy tracing.
#5- Is there anyone out there using Map 3D in California?
Thanks!!
set the coor system first along with any drawing layers you would use in each map you draw and save it as a template file so you con start a new drawing with all those items set as you like them
Units are relative to the CS you select. some are metric in meters; some are in feet indicated by the "F" in the Coord sys name CA83-IF is cal state plane in feet . I'm not sure what part of the state that is in.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tsip/gis/datalibrary/gisdatalibrary.html has all sorts of downloadable GIS data
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