SpaTools: Plot Points In Cad












Most of the total stations used in Surveying & Mapping industry, store the data in their native raw format. These raw format files may be binary or ASCII.
For example, Sokkia made total stations store the data in SDR33 file format natively.  SDR33 is an ASCII file having custom file headers and record types. Similarly, Leica total stations store the terrestrial observations in GSI file format as raw data. GSI is also a ASCII file format with custom record types and file headers. This will some other day’s story how the raw observations (Occupied Station, Back station, Bearings, Horizontal angles, vertical angles, slope distances, Height of Instrument, Target Height etc) are stored in such files.

Plot Points in CAD

Some well known raw observation file formats are listed below:

File Format
Made / Software
RW5
Carlson SurvCE
SDR
Sokkia
GSI
Leica
DN
Nikkon
DC
Trimble
txt
Topcon


All the raw observation files are processed and reduced to coordinates (Easting, Northing, Elevation) using proprietary software provided by Total Station manufacturer. 
TopconTool and TopconLink software are used to process the raw observation files produced by Topcon total stations. Leice Geomatic Office (LGO) processes the raw observation files collected by Leica made total stations.

All the proprietary software export reduced coordinate files into Comma delimited CSV files to further use in CAD and GIS software. The most common CSV file format contains five atomic units of the data in the following sequence:

Point Number, Easting, Northing, Elevation, Code
Point Number is a auto generated number starting from 1 with the increment of 1.
Easting, Northing and Elevation are the floating point numbers rounded off to 2 or 3 digits depending upon the export settings in total station or processing software.
Code is the alphanumeric code entered by the surveyor during observation.

A snapshot of a CSV file contents is shown below.




The CSV is plotted in the form of Points, Blocks or Circle objects in CAD using different software such as AutoCAD Civil 3D, Eagle Point, ArcGIS etc.  One of the style to plot points in  CAD is in the form of block with 3D point having three attributes(Point ID , Elevation and Code) as shown below:




In August 2016, I developed a cloud based online tool which plot the points in the form of point blocks with attributes.  In the continuation of SpaTools, I have developed a tool which plots a CSV file into AutoCAD in the form of the point blocks with Point ID, Elevation and Code attributes. The command can be executed by typing PPIC on command prompt as depicted below:


After loading CSV file, all the point records will be displayed on the dialogue box. If the CSV file has a first row as header, check the First Row is Header Of Columns checkbox. If the data rows are starting from the first row of file, then there is no need to check that checkbox. The list of the coordinates will display the column headers as Field1, Field2 and son on.



Select the column containing Easting or X from the list for X Field, Northing or Y for Y Field and Elevation or Z for Z Field.
If the points are desired to be plotted as Point objects (Not the Blocks with attributes) then keep uncheck the Plot Points as Blocks checkbox.

Click on OK button to get all points plotted in AutoCAD current drawing.

The updated SpaTools.DLL can be downloaded from the following link. 

Comments

  1. Unknown3 March 2020 at 23:11

    @⁨IMRAN ANEES⁩ Thanks so much for being resourceful. I have read articles on your blog way before now and I still read your articles as they are not just insightful but educative.
    The article "Are you a lecturer was one among others I truly appreciate.
    Thanks !!!
    Keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SpaTools: Import Lidar Point Cloud (LAS/LAZ) files into AutoCAD

Image
Point clouds are large data sets composed of 3D point data. These geographic point data is collected mostly by Laser scanners and drones equipped with LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors. In addition to these directly collected LIDAR point cloud data, the aerial RGB images collected by drones are processed using Image Processing & Computer Vision Algorithm based software such as Pix4D, Agisoft Photoscan or DroneDeploy to produce RGB Point Clouds in LAS file format. Besides that, the well known image processing software such as ERDAS Imagine Leica Photogrammetry Suite (LPS), ENVI and PCI Geomatica produce output in LAS file format when stereo/tri-stereo satellite images (WorldView-2, WorldView-3, SOPT 5/6/7 & Pleiades) are processed.     LAS is an industry standard file format defined by the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) that includes a system of point classification. A processed LAS file may have points classified as bar...
Read more

How to Clip objects in AutoCAD

Image
There is a tool named as CLIP in ArcGIS which cut out a piece of one feature class using one or more of the features in another feature class as a cookie cutter. This is particularly useful for creating a new feature class as study area or area of interest (AOI) that contains a geographic subset of the features in another, larger feature class. It is often needed to CLIP all the objects contained completely inside a polygon to a new drawing. The type of the objects may vary from simple objects like polylines, lines, circles, text to complex objects like splines, arcs, hatches, blocks etc. Since the release of AutoCAD 2008, a new command EXPORTLAYOUT was introduced to export all the objects in all the viewports of the layout to a separate drawing. I am writing this article because most of the CAD users are not aware about the power of this magical command of Autocad and use TRIM command to trim all the objects one by one which are outside of the desired polygon. It is h...
Read more

Creating Contour Maps in ArcGIS and Conversion to AutoCAD drawing

Image
A topographic map is simply the two dimensional representation of a portion of three dimensional surface of earth. Topographic maps provide the detailed information about the natural and man-made aspects of the terrain, but are best known for their series of contour lines that show elevation changes, and colors signifying varying land types and bodies of water. Contour lines are used to determine elevations and are lines on a map that are produced from connecting points of equal elevation (elevation refers to height in feet, or meters, above sea level). By reading contour lines, one can measure the steepness of a hill, the height of a mountain, and even the depth of a lake or ocean . These lines are evenly spaced apart. This spacing is called the contour interval. For example, if your map uses a 10-foot contour interval, you will see contour lines for every 10 feet (3 meters) of elevation -- lines at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and so on. Different maps use different intervals, dependin...
Read more

SpaTools: Extract Topographic Profile From Contours In AutoCAD

Image
A topographic map is simply the two dimensional representation of a portion of three dimensional surface of earth. Topographic maps provide the detailed information about the natural and man-made aspects of the terrain, but are best known for their series of contour lines that show elevation changes, and colors signifying varying land types and bodies of water. Contour lines are used to determine elevations and are lines on a map that are produced from connecting points of equal elevation (elevation refers to height in feet, or meters, above sea level). By reading contour lines, one can measure the steepness of a hill, the height of a mountain, and even the depth of a lake or Ocean . The contours can be generated by a DEM (Digital Elevation Model), TIN (Triangular Irregular Network) or a surface using different software such as ArcGIS.  Read the blog about How to generate contours from DEM and create a topographic map in Autocad. Most of the topographic maps used for p...
Read more

Gunter Chain / Surveyor's Chain

Image
“ What is the length of cricket pitch?”  “It is equal to 22 yards”. Cricket  is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the center of which is a 22 yard pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps.  Recalling the memories of childhood, we use to place the wickets by pacing out a distance of 22 paces by walking. At that time, we were not aware neither interested to know the exact length of cricket pitch. But this time, the question raised in my mind that why it is 22 yards!! ?? Why it is not like 22 meters or 25 yards or 20 yards? Cricket Pitch The standard length of cricket pitch is simply one Gunter chain (Surveyor’s chain) since the first known code of Laws in 1744 and it is believed this length had been in use since the introduction of Gunter's chain  in 1620 . Throughout recorded history surveyors have used ...
Read more

SpaTools: Toolbar with all tools

Image
Since January 2020, I started writing blogs about the custom tools developed for AutoCAD. All those blogs are entitled with the prefix of “SpaTools” . Currently, ten (10) different tools have been added to SpaTools.DLL . For each tool, I have published a blog with the explanation of its usability and some basic information. The readers not only appreciated it but also suggested to improve and extend it further by adding more tools such as Export CSV, KML, LAS, GPX, SHP etc and other cartographic tools. Besides that, it was suggested by some users to develop it as a Toolbar . In the response of that suggestion, I have developed it as a toolbar. The DLL file can be downloaded from the link  at the bottom of this page. Prior to loading in AutoCAD, unblock it. Right Click on the DLL file and check the unblock checkbox and apply. Load the DLL into AutoCAD using NETLOAD command.    The commands are categorized into three panels:  Import , Create Features an...
Read more