Watch this video to see how to Import Points into AutoCAD:
This technical page describes how to Import points into AutoCAD. Point features in spatial data systems may represent different types of elements from the real world. These elements may be real objects (hydrants, containers, streetlights, etc.) or fictitious points (milestones, locations, addresses, etc.)
Most file formats and spatial servers include in some way the possibility to store information about Points. Some of them can only save basic data, such as the Point coordinates and slightly more data in the ASCII CSV standard formats, but most systems include information, usually alphanumeric data, associated with the Points
Common containers to store Points features
As already stated, there are many spatial systems to store Points information, but in the following list you can find some of the most common:
· Point Esri Shape files (SHP)
· Google Earth files (KML/KMZ)
· GPS exchange format files (GPX)>
· ASCII text files (CSV, TXT, XYZ, UPT, etc.) – data limited
· MS Excel files (XLS)
· MS Access files (MDB)
· PostGIS databases
· MS SQL Server Spatial databases
Signal Points of a city stored in a KML file
Point features to CAD
CAD applications users often need to import Point features into their drawings, and the content of the data usually comes from very diverse sources: GPS generic data, surveying data, etc.
AutoCAD, being one of the popular applications in the CAD market, only allows importing points from other CAD or MCAD applications, but leaves out all the common formats and data servers to handle spatial data
Import Points into AutoCAD
Spatial Manager™ for AutoCAD includes many powerful “AutoCAD Import Points” data providers to import points into AutoCAD. The providers allow you to access the most usual file formats and spatial data servers in which you can find spatial Point data
Importing Points into AutoCAD – Selecting the source (and the data provider)
When importing the Points, you can choose between AutoCAD Point objects or Block references as imported objects, and many other interesting drawing options through the import process
You can also perform a coordinate transformation “on the fly” when importing the Points. The coordinate transformation is an important issue to consider in Spatial Manager™ for AutoCAD when importing Points because a lot of coordinate data comes from GPS devices or similar. Thus the coordinate data is formatted using Latitude and Longitude values and the users uusually need to import the data usually to projected coordinates in the DWG drawing
Example: AutoCAD imports Points
This example shows how to Import from different Point sources (KML, SHP, OSM – OpenStreetMap – and GPX) into AutoCAD. We will import a set of Point features into a drawing of a city, using AutoCAD Block References including Attributes to catch various alphanumeric data
