Infrastructure Modeling DevBlog

Create a Corridor with Civil3D 2014 API

By Augusto Goncalves

After the quick summary of new Corridor APIs available on Civil 3D 2014, this post show how create a corridor and add a baseline with alignment and profile.

Unlike other previous APIs, like Alignment and Surface, where the Create method was at the class, with Alignment.Create and TinSurface.Create respectively, to create a corridor we need to access the collection under CivilDocument and then call Add method. Like other APIs, this method returns the ObjectId of the newly created Corridor.

The following quick sample demonstrate it. Note that the same idea applies to Baseline – access the collection and call its Add method.

[CommandMethod("testCreateCorridor")]

public static void CmdCreateCorridor()

{

  Database db = Application.DocumentManager.

    MdiActiveDocument.Database;

  CivilDocument civilDoc = CivilApplication.ActiveDocument;

 

  using (Transaction trans = db.

    TransactionManager.StartTransaction())

  {

    // Create a new Corridor

    ObjectId newCorridorId = civilDoc.

      CorridorCollection.Add("Corridor 1");

    Corridor corridor = trans.GetObject(

      newCorridorId, OpenMode.ForWrite) as Corridor;

 

    // Get the first alignment of this drawing

    ObjectId alignmentId = civilDoc.GetAlignmentIds()[0];

    Alignment alignment = trans.GetObject(

      alignmentId, OpenMode.ForRead) as Alignment;

 

    // Get the first profile of this alignment

    ObjectId profileId = alignment.GetProfileIds()[0];

 

    // Create the baseline

    Baseline baseline = corridor.Baselines.Add(

      "New Baseline", alignmentId, profileId);

  }

}

Corridor API 2014: new methods and properties

By Augusto Goncalves

As mentioned on our previous post on What’s New, now we can create and modify Corridor and its components, like Baselines, BaselineRegions, Assemblies and Subassemblies.

As several developers create reports based on the API, this post show some of the new methods and properties available:

• Corridor
• GetLinkPoints, GetPointCodes, GetShapeCode, RegionLockMode, SlopePatterns
• Baselines
• SetAlignmentAndProfile
• BaselineRegion
• AppliedAssemblySetting, GetOverriddenStations, Match, Merge, RemoveOverriddenStation, Split
• Assembly
• CodeSetStyleId, CodeSetStyleName, Groups, Location, OffsetAssemblies, Type (AssemblyType), AddSubassembly, CopySubassembly, Insert/Mirror/Replace Subassembly
• Subassembly
• PointIndexHookTo, OffsetAssemblyName
• Collection with ability to iterate, add/import and remove:
• BaselineCollection
• BaselineRegionCollection
• SubassemblyCollection
• AssemblyCollection

Some methods are now deprecate, when you build with the new references, a warning message should appear at the compiler output.

Hope this help you get a feel of the big improvements we did on this release. Next we’ll show some code samples. Stay tuned.

What's new in AUTOCAD CIVIL 3D 2014 API?

By Partha Sarkar

Along with the new look, AUTOCAD CIVIL 3D 2014 adds some important .NET API to Corridors and it's constituents like Assembly, Subassembly, BaseLines.

Now, we can add / create Corridor using Autodesk.Civil.DatabaseServices.CorridorCollection.Add(string corridorName) and its overloaded methods.

We can access/add/remove Baselines using the BaselineCollection class as well as modify Baseline properties. 

We can add and remove a Subassembly as well as Import a Stock Subassembly (ImportStockSubassembly()) or Subassembly (ImportSubassembly()) from an ATC file. 

We can Add Assembly and ImportAssembly as well. 

Apart from Corridor, other API enhancements include features like Section View Groups, SectionView, Sections etc. 

For all the details on what's new in AUTOCAD CIVIL 3D 2014 .NET API, I would suggest you to take a look into Civil 3D 2014 wikihelp's "New Features in the .NET API" section. 

 

If you are using COM API, please note the following update -

If you are using the COM API, you need to update the object version to 10.3 (from 10.0 used in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013). The objects and interfaces exposed have remained the same, but you should reference the new libraries, which are installed by default to: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Civil Engineering 103".

 

Stay tuned for more articles covering new API features in the coming days!

 

AutoCAD Map 3D API Training content: Part-4

By Partha Sarkar

This is in continuation of my earlier posts on AutoCAD Map 3D API Training content: Part-1 , Part 2 & Part-3 . In this post I am going to share some insights of “Feature Service” in Geospatial Platform API used by Map 3D and AIMS. 

The Feature Service provides a data source agnostic API for the storage and retrieval of feature data. We can use Feature Service API to determine which storage technologies are available and their capabilities. For example, an Oracle Spatial database will have more capabilities than an ODBC connection. Some feature sources can have multiple schemas. Access to the data storage technology is modeled as a connection. For example, you can connect to a file and do simple insertions or connect to a relational database and do transaction-based operations.

 

public class AcMapFeatureService : MgFeatureService is part of Autodesk.Gis.Map.Platform namespace. Using AcMapServiceFactory.GetService() method and by specifying the correct MgServiceType[.FeatureService] we access AcMapFeatureService like the following code snippet -  

static AcMapFeatureService fs = AcMapServiceFactory.GetService(MgServiceType.FeatureService)  as AcMapFeatureService;

The base MgFeatureService has very useful method to create / update / manipulate features (FDO Features) in a particular data store. Some of the useful methods of MgFeatureService are -

 

Connection to a datastore. MgFeatureService::GetFeatureProviders, MgFeatureService::GetConnectionPropertyValues, MgFeatureService::TestConnection Method (CREFSTRING, CREFSTRING) , and MgFeatureService::TestConnection Method (MgResourceIdentifier*)

Description of the capabilities of the FDO provider providing access to the datastore.  MgFeatureService::GetProviderCapabilities.

Insertion, deletion and update of feature data. MgFeatureService::UpdateFeatures, MgInsertFeatures, MgDeleteFeatures, and MgUpdateFeatures.

Selection of feature data. MgFeatureService::SelectFeatures and MgFeatureService::SelectAggregate.

Description of the schema used to store feature data. MgFeatureService::DescribeSchema, MgFeatureService::DescribeSchemaAsXml, MgFeatureService::GetSchemas, MgFeatureService::SchemaToXml, MgFeatureService::GetClasses and MgFeatureService::GetClassDefinition.

Creation of an SDF feature source to cache feature data from other datastores.  MgFeatureService::CreateFeatureSource. Using the latter requires describing the schema in the source datastore. Transporting the features from the source datastore requires selecting them from the source and inserting them in the target.

Execute SQL commands. MgFeatureService::ExecuteSqlNonQuery and MgFeatureService::ExecuteSqlQuery.

Get the spatial contexts contained in the datastore. MgFeatureService::GetSpatialContexts. 

 

Some of the previous blog posts show how to create / insert / update / manipulate Feature Data in FDO data store -

How to create FDO Feature using Geospatial Platform API in Map 3D?

Read FDO Features using Map 3D Geospatial Platform API

Read FDO Geometry Area using Map 3D Geospatial Platform API

How to modify / update Feature attribute using API in Map 3D?

Using FDO API to select Features from FDO Data Source

Selecting FDO Features inside a given boundary (Polygon)

Manipulate non-feature class with Geospatial Platform API in Map 3D

 

AcMapFeatureService class also has a useful set of FeatureService Events which occur when feature-related actions, such as deletion, insertion or update are initiated, concluded or cancelled -

Attached  Chapter 4 will help you to understand working with ' FeatureService' and associated APIs which you would require in your application development using Geospatial Platform API and AutoCAD Map 3D.

 

I hope this is useful to you!

Map 3D Samples: Annotation Sample

By Gopinath Taget

I am in the reviewing Map 3D SDK samples and making sure that they work as they are documented to be. Here is the first sample I am worked on that I modified and tested to be working in Map 3D 2013: The Annotation Sample (MapSDK\Map Samples\Annotation).

This sample makes use of 'AcMapAnnotationManager' class to
customize the Annotation template functionality. How it works:

Load this arx application in Map.
-    Open any drawing file with OD data
    (This sample shows how to apply the OD field values
    as labels. Or just use attached TestAnno.dwg)
-    Run the command 'ANNOAPI'
-    Enter annotation template name
-    Select the OD table name from the
    'Select OD Table' list box
-    Select one or more column names from
    'Select Column Names' list box
-    Unless user completes the above three steps
    'Create New' will not be enabled.
-    Once 'Create New' button is enabled, click on
    this button to create the new annotation template
-    If you want to show some descriptive text
    along with actual value (label) click on
    'Show Field Names'. This will show the Field
    Name along with Filed Value
-    If the annotation template creation succeeds it also updates the
    'Templates currently defined:' list box.
   
-    Select the Template name from the 'Template currently
    defined' list box and click on
    - 'Remove' if you want to remove the annotation template
        Remove will succeed only if there are no references
        of this template in the drawing
       
    - 'Show Info' if you want to see all the information
       pertaining to the annotation template.
        This includes the Attribute static or expression
        values such as Layer, Color, LineWeight, Style,
        Height, Rotation, Justification, Attribute Tag
        and Attribute Value.
       
    - 'Insert Annotation (OD)': To insert the annotation
      text on the selected objects.
   
    - 'Insert using Override': This is same as 'Insert
      Annotation (OD)' except that it creates the annotation
      text with values defined in 'AnnotationOverrides'
      instead the values which are set during the
      'AcMapAnnotationManager::CreateAnnotationText'

Questions welcome!

AutoCAD Map 3D API Training content: Part-3

By Partha Sarkar

This is in continuation of my earlier two posts - AutoCAD Map 3D API Training content: Part-1 & Part 2 . In this post I am going to introduce you to FDO API. 

Feature Data Object (in short FDO) is essentially a Data Access Technology which is based on a set of APIs used for storing, managing, and updating GIS / Geospatial data regardless of where it is stored. FDO uses a provider-based model for supporting a variety of geospatial data sources, where each provider typically supports a particular data format or data store. FDO is open source software licensed under the LGPL.

FDO provides a model for extending API interface to additional data source technologies. The generic API is extensible and it is possible to add custom commands to a particular provider. A FDO provider is a specific implementation of the FDO API that provides access to date stored in a particular data source technology. For example, the MySQL provider provides access to GIS data stored in a MySQL database and the OSGeo FDO Provider for SHP provides access to GIS data stored in a SHP file. The extent to which a provider implements the FDO API is limited by the native capabilities of the underlying data source technology.

A client application creates a connection to a provider and then uses the connection object to create command objects for FDO actions such as Select. The client uses the command object to set the command parameters with the option of leaving some parameters with default values. Where appropriate such as in the case of Select, execution of the command returns a reader object containing the results of the command.

A client application can use the FDO Capabilities API to determine what services a particular provider offers. For example, the OSGeo FDO Provider for SDF supports the insertion of data, and the OSGeo FDO Provider for WMS does not.

Comprehensive documentation on FDO Data Access Technology is available at FDO OSGeo site as well as Autodesk WikiHelp page. There is a “Getting Started” chapter in “The Essential FDO” wikihelp page which will help you to jump start using FDO API. “Development Practices” and “FDO Cookbook” are other two valuable chapters I would recommend to go through if you plan to create a custom FDO provider.

This Chapter 3 will help you to understand working with 'FDO API' and application development using Geospatial Platform API for AutoCAD Map 3D and AIMS.

 

I hope this is useful to you!

Autodesk Infrastructure Map Server(AIMS) API Training content : Part-1

By Daniel Du

Autodesk^® Infrastructure Map Server is a software platform for distributing spatial data over the Internet or on an intranet. In this chapter, you will know the features of AMIS, understand the architecture and different components of Map Server.

Infrastructure Map Server consists of numerous separate components, including:
       Autodesk^® Infrastructure Map Server
       Autodesk^® Infrastructure Web Server Extension (for application development)
      Autodesk^® Infrastructure Studio (for map authoring)
      Autodesk^® Infrastructure Application Extension (works with Oracle/SQL Server)
      Autodesk^® Infrastructure Administrator 
      Autodesk^® Infrastructure Mobile Viewer Extension
      Autodesk^® Infrastructure GeoREST Extension

Infrastructure Studio and the Infrastructure Map Server viewers are client applications of Infrastructure Map Server. Requests coming from these clients, and from the other client applications that you develop using the API, go to the Web Server Extension by means of HTTP protocol. The WebAgent component of the Web Server Extension processes the requests and forwards them on to Infrastructure Map Server. When it receives a request, Infrastructure Map Server accesses the resources stored in the resource repository, builds and renders the map as a static image for the viewer, and returns it to the Web Extensions, which in turn send it back to the client.

Autodesk^® Infrastructure Studio is an authoring environment that handles all aspects of collecting and preparing geospatial data for distribution on the Internet (except custom coding). You need to organize your data first before development.

Autodesk Infrastructure Map Server Wikihelp contains very useful document, please do check it out. In a series of blog posts in the coming days / months you will see most of the Infrastructure Map Server API training content (PDF) will be published here . This is chapter1, hope it helpful for you. All of our sample code has be posted here.

TinSurfaceTriangle and its vertices direction in AutoCAD Civil 3D

By Partha Sarkar

Recently I was working on a project and I had to use TinSurfaceTriangle object to access the Surface triangle vertices. You might be knowing already that TinSurfaceTriangle class encapsulates a triangle in a TinSurface in AutoCAD Civil 3D. TinSurfaceTriangle type exposes the following members -

 Vertex1 - > Gets the first vertex in the triangle. 

 Vertex2 - > Gets the second vertex in the triangle. 

 Vertex3 - > Gets the third vertex in the triangle.

 

One question came up during our discussion - in which direction (clock-wise or anti-clockwise) these vertex points are counted. So, to figure out that I did a quick test to iterate through the vertices and see which direction they are returned by Civil 3D API. Here is the result which shows us the direction :

 

And the C# .NET code snippet I used :

using (Transaction trans = db.TransactionManager.StartTransaction())

{

  TinSurface surface = trans.GetObject(surfaceId, OpenMode.ForRead) as TinSurface;

 

  TinSurfaceTriangleCollection tinSurfTrianglColl = surface.GetTriangles(true);

 

  if (tinSurfTrianglColl.Count > 0)

  {

    foreach (TinSurfaceTriangle tinsurfTriangle in tinSurfTrianglColl)

    {

      // Vertex1

      Point3d pnt3d = tinsurfTriangle.Vertex1.Location;

      ed.WriteMessage("\n Vertex1 ::  X1 : " + pnt3d.X.ToString() +

                      "  Y1 : " + pnt3d.Y.ToString() +

                      "  Z1 : " + pnt3d.Z.ToString());

 

      // Vertex2

      pnt3d = tinsurfTriangle.Vertex2.Location;

      ed.WriteMessage("\n Vertex2 ::  X1 : " + pnt3d.X.ToString() +

                      "  Y1 : " + pnt3d.Y.ToString() +

                      "  Z1 : " + pnt3d.Z.ToString());

 

      // Vertex3

      pnt3d = tinsurfTriangle.Vertex3.Location;

      ed.WriteMessage("\n Vertex3 ::  X1 : " + pnt3d.X.ToString() +

                      "  Y1 : " + pnt3d.Y.ToString() +

                      "  Z1 : " + pnt3d.Z.ToString());

 

    }

 

  }

 

  trans.Commit();

}

 

Hope this is useful to you!

Data sharing between AutoCAD Civil 3D and HTML5 application

By Partha Sarkar

In the process of exploring HTML5 canvas and draw geometries, I thought how about ‘creating a HTML5 application to show a Civil 3D Pipe Network geometry’. 

With this goal in mind, I first approached to create a simple Civil 3D .NET application to select a Pipe, get the Pipe Network and export the Pipe coordinates from the selected network to an external file (TXT file). We can use the following Civil 3D .NET API to get the Pipe’s start and end points –

Pipe.StartPoint

Pipe.EndPoint

So, the first part was easy to create a TXT file and store all the StartPoint and EndPoint of the Pipes in a selected Pipe Network.

In the second part, I wanted to read the TXT file with Pipe Geometry from Civil 3D. I found the FileReader in HTML5 which provides an API to select files and access their data.

After accessing the data, I had to parse it and create an array in JavaScript. In the next part, it was easy to get the HTML5 canvas and the context and loop through the array storing the pipe network vertices and create line using HTML5 context.lineTo() API

 if (cleanlineVertices.length > 3)

{
	context.beginPath();
	context.moveTo(cleanlineVertices[0], cleanlineVertices[1]);
	for (var i = 2; i < (cleanlineVertices.length - 1); i+=2)
	{		
	 context.lineTo(cleanlineVertices[i], cleanlineVertices[i+1]);	
	}
		
	// Set Line width
	context.lineWidth = 5;
		
	// Set Line color
	context.strokeStyle = '#fa00ff';
	context.stroke();
}

 

In this video you will see the workflow and a quick demo of this application.

 

So, we can share data from AutoCAD Civil 3D and a HTML5 can show us the geometry in the actual project site and all the stakeholders can verify if the network is passing through the desired location  :) !

Manipulate non-feature class with Geospatial Platform API in Map 3D

By Daniel Du

Firstly what is feature class and non-feature class? Generally speaking, a Feature Class is a class with associated geometry, so that it is possible to create a layer in Map 3D or AIMS. A non-feature class just contains non-spatial data that can be used as a standalone or contained class has not geometry field. Geospatial Plat for API, which uses FDO, can manipulate both feature class and non feature class.

let’s say we have a feature schema as below, which is a SDF data source, there are two classes in the schema, one is feature class with Geometry field, another is non-feature class, just attribute fields.

 

If you connect to this data source in Map 3D, you will notice that the non-feature class is gray out as it cannot be added to map as layer.

 

Now let’s add some data into this non-feature class with Geospatial platform API. The important thing is to get the resource identifier of the data source, since it is connected to Map 3D and add a layer, I use following code to demo how to get the resource ID:

[CommandMethod("InsertNonFeatureClass")]
public void InsertNonFeatureClass()
{
    const string LAYERNAME = "River";
    MgFeatureService featuerSvc = AcMapServiceFactory
        .GetService(MgServiceType.FeatureService) 
        as MgFeatureService;
 
    //This is just for demonstration of the format of FeatureSourceId
    AcMapMap currentMap = AcMapMap.GetCurrentMap();
    MgLayerBase layer = null;
    MgLayerCollection allLayers = currentMap.GetLayers();
    foreach (MgLayerBase lyr in allLayers)
    {
        if (lyr.Name == LAYERNAME)
        {
            layer = lyr;
            break;
        }
    }
    //Just to demonstrate the format of FeatureSource
    string resId = layer.FeatureSourceId;
    System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(resId);
 
    //---------------------------
    //Library://River.FeatureSource
    //---------------------------
    //OK   
    //---------------------------
 
 
 
 
    // Insert into non-feature class
    MgResourceIdentifier featureSourceId = new MgResourceIdentifier(resId);
            
    string className = "DefaultSchema:RiverAttributes"; //feature class name
    MgPropertyCollection properities = new MgPropertyCollection();
            
    //ID is auto generated
    properities.Add(
            new MgStringProperty("Name", 
                                "Yangzi River"));
    properities.Add(
            new MgStringProperty("Desciption", 
                            "The longest river in China"));
    MgInsertFeatures insFeature = 
                new MgInsertFeatures(className, properities);
 
    MgFeatureCommandCollection commands = new MgFeatureCommandCollection();
    commands.Add(insFeature);
 
    featuerSvc.UpdateFeatures(featureSourceId, commands, false);
 
}

 

here is the result in Data table:

 

From the code snippet, it is exactly the same as operating a feature class, with feature service. Actually for a feature class has been added to map as layer, there is a simple way, that is ：
"Layer.UpdateFeatures() "

This method actually call underlay feature service to update features. But if you want to update a non-feature class, that does not have a corresponding layer, you have to use the lower lever API - featureService.UpdateFeatures() as demoed in ditto code snippet. Please note that this concept also applies to AIMS as well, The code can be migrated to AIMS with only minor changes.

Hope this helps.