Watch this video to see how to Import Points into ZWCAD:
This technical page describes how to Import points into ZWCAD. Point features in spatial data systems may represent different types of elements from the real world. These elements may be real Entities (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.)
· 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.
ZWCAD, 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 ZWCAD
Spatial Manager™ for ZWCAD includes many powerful “ZWCAD Import Points” data providers to import points into ZWCAD. 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 ZWCAD – Selecting the source (and the data provider)
When importing the Points, you can choose between ZWCAD Point Entities or Block references as imported Entities, 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 ZWCAD 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: ZWCAD imports Points
This example shows how to Import from different Point sources (KML, SHP, OSM – OpenStreetMap – and GPX) into ZWCAD. We will import a set of Point features into a drawing of a city, using ZWCAD Block References including Attributes to catch various alphanumeric data
