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Civil 3D 2013 (Map 2013) Image Issue

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Message 1 of 38
Cadguru42
8846 Views, 37 Replies

Civil 3D 2013 (Map 2013) Image Issue

We have color GeoTIFF aerials that we've been using for 4 years without any problems until now.  In Civil 3D 2013, when I use the MAPIINSERT command to bring in the TIFFs, they are being shifted way outside of the coordinate system that's been set up.  I can do the exact same steps in all previous versions all the way back to 2006 using the same template and the images come into the correct coordinates.  It's just 2013 that shifts the images.

 

The images were obtained from the State of Tennessee and our drawings are all in Tennessee State Plane Coordinates NAD83, US Survey Feet.  I have attached two screenshots of the MAPIINSERT dialog box for both 2012 and 2013.  The same image.

 

How can I get C3D 2013 or Map 2013 to insert the images correctly?  All my units are set to foot from every dialog that I know about.  The 2013 drawing used the exact same template as the 2012 one, but just saved as 2013.  

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
37 REPLIES 37
Message 21 of 38
antoniovinci
in reply to: jhohman5

Ensure the .TFW is in same folder where the .TIF is, sir.

Message 22 of 38
jhohman5
in reply to: antoniovinci

Yah it is. Not sure what to do here. Sent from two tin cans and a string.
Message 23 of 38
oz333mex
in reply to: Cadguru42

Try this:

 

1. Open a new fresh, clean DWG.

 

2.On your Prospector "Settings" Tab right click and make sure your drawing units are to what you desire (feet or meters)

 

3.On the command line type "UNITS". Set your  "Insertion Scale" to "Unitless".

 

4. Now using MAPIINSERT bring in the georeferenced images.

 

5. Save and close.

 

Next...

 

1. If fails. Then trouble shoot by following the same steps except this time the first step before inserting the images is setting a different variable for INSUNITS and see how it behaves. There is a total of 6 variables so explore them. Mine are set to 6 but I work in metric. 

 

Message 24 of 38
oz333mex
in reply to: Cadguru42

Oh yes and setting a coordinate system to your CAD dwg before the MAPINSERT will always cause problems. I ran into that issue as well. My theory is because the images are usually provided by others in a set X,Y,Z. So whereever you are in the world it makes sense to apply your coordinate system to your CAD file. However this can cause things to shift because you no longer have the regular WCS. For example:

 

An outside source provides a image file with coordinates X=3.5, and Y=1.2. These are set in stone coordinates regardless of where you are in the world.

 

Now this outside source tells you the are on "Joe Blow" coordinate system. Thats good to know. However do not set your CAD file to the system before inserting it.

 

Why?

Pre setting a coordinate sytem will shift your X and Y. (In other words your WCS is now adjusted to fit the pre set coordinates.)

 

Meaning the X and Y sent from the outside source will not be the same anymore.

 

Not sure if this makes sense but thats my theory. So I always make sure to never have preset coordinates and my insurtion units are set to unitless.

 

Just a theory

 

Message 25 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: oz333mex


@oz333mex wrote:

Oh yes and setting a coordinate system to your CAD dwg before the MAPINSERT will always cause problems. I ran into that issue as well. My theory is because the images are usually provided by others in a set X,Y,Z. So whereever you are in the world it makes sense to apply your coordinate system to your CAD file. However this can cause things to shift because you no longer have the regular WCS. For example:

 

An outside source provides a image file with coordinates X=3.5, and Y=1.2. These are set in stone coordinates regardless of where you are in the world.

 

Now this outside source tells you the are on "Joe Blow" coordinate system. Thats good to know. However do not set your CAD file to the system before inserting it.

 

Why?

Pre setting a coordinate sytem will shift your X and Y. (In other words your WCS is now adjusted to fit the pre set coordinates.)

 

Meaning the X and Y sent from the outside source will not be the same anymore.

 

Not sure if this makes sense but thats my theory. So I always make sure to never have preset coordinates and my insurtion units are set to unitless.

 

Just a theory

 


I've already had a support request plus some other help from a very kind Autodesk employee regarding this issue. Raster Design, and now Map 2013 (C3D), ignore the geo header units. Autodesk reads one of the obscured coordinate codes and bases everything on that single code. It ignores all other header information. Before 2013, MAPIINSERT just read the X and Y insertion and scale. It didn't try to reproject the image on the fly. They added this new "feature" with 2013, but failed in implementing it correctly. Raster Design has always used this same method, but since I hardly use Raster Design I didn't notice it until a year ago with the changes to 2013. 

 

I'd be curious to see if anyone has tried 2014 yet to see if the same problem exists. Or I could always wait until Autodesk gets their act together and puts 2014 on our subscription site. 

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 26 of 38
kevinreed2
in reply to: Cadguru42

I found this thread while searching about this same problem.  I had some trouble the other day getting some geotiffs to import into their correct location, they were coming in way off, two states over at best.  These were images that I’ve used before, but with a little trial and error I get them to import in the correct location, or so I thought. 

We are currently digitizing a bunch of 24k geology quad maps.  I have these maps as geotiffs on our server.  I used mapiinsert to load one of the geotiffs and started digitizing.  After I completed the digitizing I exported the areas to a shapefile on the server.  I then opened Global Mapper and imported the same geotiff that I used in Civil3D and the shapefile that I created in Civil3D.  I noticed that in Global Mapper my digitized lines were off from where they should be, but only in the top right corner, which makes me think scale issue.  I get the same thing in ArcGIS.  After some messing around I found that the digitized vectors never changed, it was Civil3D importing the geotiffs incorrectly when using mapiinsert.   Then after reading this thread in the last post engrtech mentioned importing through raster design, so I tried that and it imports correctly. 

I’m glad that I figured out how to fix the problem because of this thread (thanks engrtech) but I need to rant a little because this is so frustrating.  I’ve had a team of three digitizing for a few weeks straight on files created with mapiinsert and now everything we’ve done is off slightly.  But that’s nothing when I think that I’ve been using mapiinsert for years.  How many years worth of work is slightly wrong now because of this?  I feel like I need to let others know about this now.  When mapiinsert imports hundreds of miles off that’s one thing, it’s easy to notice, but when it shifts roughly 15 feet over a mile it’s a lot harder to catch.  Given the choices, is it not reasonable to assume the one with MAP in the command name would be the correct one to import a MAP with?

Message 27 of 38
rl_jackson
in reply to: kevinreed2

I have also come across this issue, and it does not seem to be consistent, some State Plane Zones work fine and others come in as Metric regardless of what the zone the image is.

 

I imported an image for a site that was in TX SCF83 but the image came in as TX SC this happened wether I used MAPIINSERT or MAPCONNECT so It's defenitely an ADESK issue that needs to be fixed.


Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI

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Message 28 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: Cadguru42

Well, 2014 didn't fix this issue either. Thanks Autodesk, you only had a year to fix this giant problem. 

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 29 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: Cadguru42

I also just tried importing these TIFFs into InfraWorks 2014 and it also reads the units as meters instead of US survey foot, which is what the actual file says. Whom ever at Autodesk is in charge of coordinate systems needs to really look at how they're doing this as all of their softwares are ignoring the image's explicit units field. 

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 30 of 38
MacNSD
in reply to: antoniovinci

I have run into this problem as well, make sure your Tif is 8 bit --

 

 

Message 31 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: Cadguru42

Autodesk still hasn't fixed this. In C3D 2015 and Map 2015 the UNITS header is ignored. It's only been three versions that Autodesk has had time to fix this. Maybe when Map 2020 comes out they'll get around to this.

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 32 of 38
rl_jackson
in reply to: Cadguru42

You thought there was going to be actual value added to the yearly release. REALLY!!!

Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI

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Message 33 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: rl_jackson


@Anonymous wrote:
You thought there was going to be actual value added to the yearly release. REALLY!!!

I figured since there was no new features added to 2015 that perhaps they fixed bugs. Guess I was expecting too much from Autodesk.

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 34 of 38
rl_jackson
in reply to: Cadguru42

Maybe they'll fix it with the next .dwg file update. Come to think of it didn't that problem rear its ugly head about the same time as the geolocation came into play. I can't remeber with C3D12 ever having the problem, but 13 on has.

Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI

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Message 35 of 38
andy.manninen
in reply to: Cadguru42

Just wanted to let you guys know:  We are transitioning from Civil 3D 2012 to Civil 3D 2014 and we are seeing major issues with Raster when inserting aerial photography.  We are using a MN county coordinate system and when we import publically available county aerials the image does not get transformed correctly.  We do that same procedure using 2012 and the image falls in the right spot.  If we use a FDO connection to the SID image in 2014 it lands in the right spot.  If we use 2014 and use the raster insert with any of the transformation options (typically 3 point affine) the image is off. Why? Why does it transform correctly with 2012 and is broken in 2014?  What changed in Raster?

 

:Cheers:

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Civil 3D 2014 V2
Message 36 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: andy.manninen


@andy.manninen wrote:

Just wanted to let you guys know:  We are transitioning from Civil 3D 2012 to Civil 3D 2014 and we are seeing major issues with Raster when inserting aerial photography.  We are using a MN county coordinate system and when we import publically available county aerials the image does not get transformed correctly.  We do that same procedure using 2012 and the image falls in the right spot.  If we use a FDO connection to the SID image in 2014 it lands in the right spot.  If we use 2014 and use the raster insert with any of the transformation options (typically 3 point affine) the image is off. Why? Why does it transform correctly with 2012 and is broken in 2014?  What changed in Raster?

 

:Cheers:


The problem that hasn't been fixed yet relates to MAPIINSERT reprojecting the image on import. Raster Design has been doing this for many years, but since I rarely use it I never noticed. Are you saying that using Raster Design 2012 inserts the image different than Raster Design 2014 or are you using MAPIINSERT?

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 37 of 38
andy.manninen
in reply to: Cadguru42

Yes, we have been getting reprojection issues when using Raster Design to insert an image.  For example: Our image is a SID of Hennepin County here in MN, our drawing coordinate system set to MN, Hennepin County  US foot, the SID image has a coordinate system set to NAD83 UTM zone 15N.  When we bring the image in through Raster design, Insert, using a 3 point affine transformation the image will be shifted about 1-2 miles north of our survey data.  We do that same thing using Civil 3D 2012 and Raster 2012 and the image is right on. 

 

I have been doing testing today and I have found that if you set your coordinate system in the drawing settings you get this shift but if you set your coordinate system using the MAP-->TOOLS--> ASSIGN GLOBAL COORDINATE SYSTEM in the MAP pulldown menu then the image does insert correctly in 2014.  That is confusing, i thought the coordinate system is the coordinate system and there was no difference between setting it in the Drawing Settings or if you used the MAP command, but apparently there is a difference because it makes the raster transformation work if you set your drawing settings units and zone to no datum/ no projection and then set the coordinate system in your map pulldown. UGH... better test this more to verify.

Windows 7 x 64
12 GB Ram
Intel Xeon Quad 3.20 GHz
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800
Civil 3D 2014 V2
Message 38 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: andy.manninen


@andy.manninen wrote:

Yes, we have been getting reprojection issues when using Raster Design to insert an image.  For example: Our image is a SID of Hennepin County here in MN, our drawing coordinate system set to MN, Hennepin County  US foot, the SID image has a coordinate system set to NAD83 UTM zone 15N.  When we bring the image in through Raster design, Insert, using a 3 point affine transformation the image will be shifted about 1-2 miles north of our survey data.  We do that same thing using Civil 3D 2012 and Raster 2012 and the image is right on. 

 

I have been doing testing today and I have found that if you set your coordinate system in the drawing settings you get this shift but if you set your coordinate system using the MAP-->TOOLS--> ASSIGN GLOBAL COORDINATE SYSTEM in the MAP pulldown menu then the image does insert correctly in 2014.  That is confusing, i thought the coordinate system is the coordinate system and there was no difference between setting it in the Drawing Settings or if you used the MAP command, but apparently there is a difference because it makes the raster transformation work if you set your drawing settings units and zone to no datum/ no projection and then set the coordinate system in your map pulldown. UGH... better test this more to verify.


You'll probably have better luck in the Raster Design forum instead of Map, then.

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Raster-Design-General/bd-p/134

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM

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