ArcGIS for Autocad
I see that Don Kuehne has an interesting announcement on his blog. ESRI has announced ArcGIS for Autocad.
ArcGIS for AutoCAD is a no-cost ESRI application that works on top of AutoCAD 2007 and gives me the ability to add one or more ESRI map service view(s) to my AutoCAD drafting environment. With this new ESRI technology I have direct access to every GIS data format without conversion and without translation inside AutoCAD. I as an AutoCAD user see what the GIS professional sees; finished high quality cartographic representations of complex GIS data structures thay may be stored in a wide variety raster, network, image and vector formats.
I guess this is ArcCAD reborn huh (well ArcCAD on steroids)? I’ll be honest, I’ve never liked the ArcSDE CAD Client. I hope this will make it much easier to leverage ArcSDE with Autocad.
It will be free and available “later this year”.
Odd – I got a Page not found message when I hit your link. Odder, I could not locate any announcement on Don’s page.
Maybe the announcement was a little premature and was pulled off (sorry this shoulda been with my prev comment)?
This effort seems a tad duplicative especially in the context of Autodesk’s FDO technology that is already built into Civil 3D 2007??
Looks like it was pulled…
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What happens to ArcGIS software sales. Or is ESRI promoting Autodesk’s AutoCAD sales?
I think this person is confused. There is no reason for ESRI to create/ship such a product…
Both Autodesk Civil 3D 2007 and Map 3d 2007 ship (from Autodesk) with the ability to read/write SHP, ArcSDE and a host of other formats directly. They, like ESRI, have tapped Safe Software’s “ETL” technology for use with Autodesk’s FDO (feature data objects) technology to provide an environment free of import/export.
Much like ArcGIS, you “Add data…”, choose SHP, point to the source, and viola… ready to use in Map ‘07. There are performance issues with some types of data sets, but if you only have Map or Civil 3D and need to directly use GIS data, then you just put up with the minor issues…
Why would ESRI try to compete with an existing product, on a competitor platform, for free?
Jim C, for those who don’t have Civil 3D or Map 3D this tool is valuable. I’ve been stuck using the CAD client to get SDE into Autocad.
The value for the AutoCAD users will be in the consumption of the rich GIS logic of ArcGIS Server ! Have you ever tried to make nice maps and powerfull geoprocessing with AutoCAD (or Mapguide) ?
James – I’m sorry, I missed the plain vanilla Autocad inference… So, if it really is free, and it will sit on top of plain Autocad (any version back to 2000 or so), then yes, it might really be worthwhile to hundreds (thousands?) of users… And you won’t have to buy FME… Still wondering about the “free” part though — JC
Hey anything to get CAD users hooked on SDE right?
Jim – This person, Don Kuehne, is the technical product manager for CAD interoperability at ESRI. I think he knows what’s going on there, he was got a little too far in front on this for ESRI’s sake and had to pull it.
Also, Adena at All Points Blog mentions that ArcGIS for Autocad was demo’d at the ESRI Federal UC this past week.. and that the “‘product’ is still a ways off.” Which might explain Don’s pulling his post about it. Her post is at:
http://www.allpointsblog.com/archives/2334-Fed-UC-Product-News.html
James – SDE is just a technology now no more a commercial product, but ArcGIS Server is the product that ESRI positions as the Enterprise GeoSpatial Server, delivering spatial (Maps, data , GP, Geocoding, …) web services to all kind of clients, including AutoCAD. The value of this free tool for the Autocad user is to access this rich GIS logic, the value for ESRI is to sell ArcGIS Server.
It’s been officially released. It is written up on All-Points Blog. http://www.allpointsblog.com/archives/2564-ArcGIS-for-AutoCAD-Available.html
Here’s ESRI’s page:
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-autocad/index.html
i have a problem adding images using arcgis for autocad. i have configured the profiles to use the problem comes when it comes to the add image service button. unfortunately i have not been able to set the server name correctly there fore i cannot add images. the error mesage is given as “initialization of client object for config file ‘62.8.70.17′ failed. failed to create server proxy”. where ‘62.8.70.17′ is the name of my server. also the image service part is blank and only reads ’server not found’.can someone please tell me where the problem might lie
hi