Which program is most suited?

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I'm new on the forum and have exactly zero experience with any AutoCAD programs.

I'm currently working on a yardage guide for my golf course. So far I've gotten the green/fairway/etc shapes by tracing GoogleEarth images in Adobe Illustrator. Works just great, but measuring all the distances by hand in Illustrator is kind of a nuisance. Especially when one does have to change the reference point afterwards and redo all the calculations and labels. See screenshot. So I thought there has to be a better way to do this. And a Google search put out AutoCAD for my search terms.

What I ideally would want is a program which still lets me draw the shapes by using the Google Earth images (scaled to a coordinate system) and then set a reference point and several target points which would display their distance (meters/yards exchangeble?) to the reference point. Changes to the reference point would be automatically reflected by the labels.

Which of the myriad of AutoCAD programs would be best suited for this task?

On a second note....obviously the accuracy of those distances relies heavily on the accuracy of the Google Earth images and a proper scaling to fit the coordinate system. Would the software be a different one if the data for the points (reference/target) would be collected/imported with a professional grade GPS Rover?

Thanks in advance for any help!

It's much appreciated!

[injineri]

Think you can do it in regular Autocad. you can attach Google image, then scale it according reference distance which you know, and draw everything on that image. also there are Autocad MAP and civil 3d and they have more instruments for site engineering. but in Autocad there is raster design tool which installs separately in Autocad and can be used with images. for beginning on your place I would try regular Autocad with attached images and tracing lines on it.

[chriscowgill7373 · Accepted solution]

You may be able to export what you have from illustrator to an autocad format, and then just use autocad for the distancing.   regular autocad can bring in Bing maps to a georeferenced location, but that is about it, and the quality of those images in my opinion are not high enough to do what you need.  There are some third party add-ons that can bring in a Google map with much higher clarity, but I think it is built as an add-on to civil 3d.  if you are brining in points you will want c3d as it has point file import capabilities.  The nice thing about either product is you can get a free 30 day trial and see what works for you.  c3d I believe is almost twice the cost of AutoCAD.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your input.

I'll have a look at Civil3D then and see whether that's something I want to expand my self-education on.