Hi!
I've just joined a team that uses a number of different softwares that don't really communicate with each other all that well. We have a number of building floor plans and site plans that are done in AutoCAD. We manually grab information from these drawings (mostly the areas of polygons), and that information is entered into a Microsoft Access database. There's a lot of 'standard' information attached to each building/site in the database as well (building name, some unique identifiers, date the building was built, etc, etc).. This placeholder information is usually manually copied into a titleblock on the CAD drawing. Whenever any this information changes, it has to be updated in both the access database and on the CAD titleblock. Whenever the size of a polygon changes, it needs to be updated manually in the database.
Then (and I get a little hazy when it gets to the GIS component), I'm under the impression that one or two layers from the CAD drawings (containing the basic polygons) are imported into another 'master' CAD file that contains all of the polygons from all of our drawings, and then this is brought into a program called MapInfo through a laborious process that seems to cause no end of trouble to the people involved. In MapInfo, numerous maps and similar products are created and enjoyed by all. Whenever a polyline changes in the original CAD file, the 'master' CAD file needs to be manually re-updated, the polygons re-imported, the 'master' file re-converted over into MapInfo, etc.
My gut feeling is that we have too many links in the chain and too much duplication. We have some versions of Map 3D 2011 kicking around that we should be able to get approved by our company.
Here would be a really ideal situation for us:
1. Building and Site plans in CAD (everyone uses CAD), but polygons are somehow tagged with a unique ID or something that automatically updates a database, and vice versa. It would be great if increasing the size of a polygon in a CAD file automatically updated the area of that polygon in our database. It would be great if changing the name of a building in our database would change the information in the titleblock of the corresponding CAD file.
2. The two or three layers of the building/site plans (containing all these polygons) can easily be opened in a GIS program (AutoCAD Map 3D?) and fun maps can be produced without having to do all these bizarre updates first.
3. Down the road, we'd like an easy interface that our clients can use to zoom in on our sites and get information about the buildings on that site. Something like Google Maps, but made specifically for us.
Will AutoCAD Map 3D help push things in the right direction?
Thank you!!