Queries on AutoCAD

[awa5114]

I have had some experience working in GIS software, I'm especially fond of the querying and automating capabilities that GIS offers. Im curious as to whether CAD has something similar. Specifically, I am trying to develop a routine that can query a building plan for intersecting lines, extract coordinates to spreadsheet format, assign attributes to various lines/polylines/drawing elements. Basically GIS type functionality but for buildings. I've looked into dbConnect and AutoLISP but neither seems to offer these capabilities.

 

[CarlB]

You can do that with Autolisp (and vlisp functions). I recall "hot tip Harry" of Cadence posted a routine many years ago that found all points of intersection of all objects in a drawing. Will need to add checks to filter out matching endpoints vs intersections. Easy to write results to a text file or csv file. Can add information to objects as xdata or to a dictionary.

 

[TerryScan]

AutoCad Map has GIS functionality. There are also AutoCad add-ons from various sources such as:

http://dotsoft.com/mapworks.htm

http://www.carlsonsw.com/solutions/gis-products/gis/