Shapefile Attributes

[KirkNoonan]

I'm importing an aerial index grid shapefile into C3D 2016. The polygons come in just fine, but C3D is somehow changing the 'Name' field from the values in the table to something seemingly random. The same thing happens in 2015 as well.

Here is the correct attribute table per QGIS:

The 'Name' field is essentially the file name without the path and extension. Here is the Attribute table opened in Open Office:

And lastly, here is the Autodesk interpretation of the same attribute table:

Any ideas? The shapefile is attached as well.

Thanks for the help.

Kirk

[O_Eckmann · Accepted solution]

Hi,

In my MAP 3D 2012, no problem, NAME is OK

In MAP 3D 2014, NAME is same as you

But 273130 = 10986 + 8 * 32768

I think that MAP 2014 and above keep only interger les than 32768 , when field is declared as N,6,0

If you change N,6,0 by N,11,0 in OOo,  MAP 3D 2014 consider this field as a long int and keep the right value.

Olivier

[Pointdump]

Olivier,

That sure looks like what's happening. I would never have thought of that.

How do you change the table column to use long integers?

Dave

[KirkNoonan]

Looks logical. It only takes a minute to regenerate the attribute table. I'll give it a shot on Monday. Thanks

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

have not tried it not, but just a suggestion: run _MAPIMPORT with the data and then _MAPEXPORT to create a new SHP with the same data, but written directly from Map3D then. Does that work? ...and please don't forget the ObjectData so the attributes are transferred too.

I know that within DBF a number type called "decimal" and a given number of places can be defined, but that's very historic and current systems get more and more issues with that. Hopefully my suggestion above is working.

- alfred -

[Pointdump]

Alfred,

I tried your suggestion, but no go. And for some reason it added another column named "FeatId1" which counts down backwards from 669.

Dave

[Alfred.NESWADBA · Accepted solution]

Hi Dave,

thank's for trying it. And well, now a bit of time was available 🙂

Suggestion that worked for me: download an editor for DBF (like e.g. DBF-Commander Free >>>click<<<), open the DBF file from the SHP-dataset and modify the structure from "Numeric 6" to "Numeric 10" (at least > 6) like shown here:

And then opening the dataset with Map 3D 2016 I get the data correct (BTW: always delete the IDX file when transfering SHP-data between different products)

What I'm thinking (and some dark rooms in my remembering storage tells me) the number of 6 places for a numeric value is interpreted incorrect in Map 3D as it interprets that as 5 places and with the next error in thinking it's converted to integer, which can be a value of between 0 to 65535, and all above the 65535 (= 16bit) is truncated or calculated negativ. So Oliver is absolutly correct (with a bit of other calculation, but at least the same result).

Conclusion: within the data-structure use a number-of-places value <> 6 and all works fine ... I have tried it with 10 and it's correct.

HTH, - alfred -

[Pointdump]

Alfred,

Thank you. I'm really surprised that Map 3D doesn't have a way to change the Table Column Formats. Is DBF-Commander a Stand-Alone program or does it "attach" itself to Map 3D?

Here's the Official Pointdump Workaround:

Dave

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> I'm really surprised that Map 3D doesn't have a way to change the Table Column Formats

Yes, with SHP-dataset it's really inflexible as it does not allowed to modify the structure of the attributive data at all, that makes the live with that quite hard.

A bit easier it's with SDF, but even that does not allow to modify existing attributes, it only allows you to add new coloumns. Sometimes it would be great to modify a datatype from string to integer if there are only numeric values existing ih that column, but no way, other tools are needed.

Well, looking more to databases for storing GIS-datasets (easiest case to SQLite) you also have to use the database tools to modify the structure and can't do that in Map 3D. That is one of the differences where other GIS-tools can do more than Map 3D.

>> Is DBF-Commander a Stand-Alone program or does it "attach" itself to Map 3D?

Yes, this is a stand-alone tool which has nothing to do with GIS or Map3D, in this case it's just used for editing DBF-file structure. And the free version can do that.

>> Here's the Official Pointdump Workaround:

Be careful, this will not work when the whole bandwidth of values is used (from 0 to 273000), but for the showed numbers all above 27200 I guess you have checked that and it will work 😉

- alfred -

[KirkNoonan · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the responses. I changed the field type to float. All it takes is editing the column header of the .dbf in Open Office. I changed the precision to 9 and the scale to 2. That meant changing the header value of N,6,0 to N,9,2 and everything works as expected now.