Monday, March 5. 2007

Update: ArcGIS for AutoCAD Available

Update: Don Kuehne (of ESRI, but posting as himself) offers his take and a link to an ArcNews article on the product.

--original post---

I wrote about this "new product" from ESRI after seeing a demo at Fed UC in January. It's available for download now; I expected to wait longer, but perhaps there was significant "demand" after the preview?

The product, as I noted in the earlier post delivers ArcGIS results "in the form of map service images." The product is free, but to use it you need AutoCAD 2007 and ArcGIS Server 9.2. The key features listed on the ESRI site:

View one or more georeferenced ArcGIS Server map service(s) in AutoCAD.
Dynamically refresh the map services(s) with AutoCAD Pan/Zoom tools.
Identify features in the map service by picking locations on the map service image in AutoCAD.
Cut and Paste values from Identify dialog to Windows clipboard.
Toggle dynamic refresh of the map service On/Off.
Toggle visibility of map service On/Off.

That sure sounds like WMS sort of funcationality to me. (screen shot) Is based on WMS? Why not just use WMS? Why has Autodesk not put WMS support into AutoCAD? I guess because they want folks to buy Map 3D. (I'm ready to drop the 3D now, how about you?) WMS support is in Autodesk Map 2007. I was "grabbed" at Autodesk World Press Day by a rep, so they were sure I'd seen it. Third parties have offered WMS support for AutoCAD and Map in the past including IME and GlobeXplorer, now owned by DigitalGlobe.

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"(Sharing Your kNowlegde & Enhancing Resources in GIS) is a group of GIS Professionals, Managers and Students from Tompkins County and the surrounding area. "
(No, I don't know where Tompkins County is!)

Friday, January 19. 2007

What Journo saw at ESRI Fed UC

The Washington City Paper was also at the ESRI Federal User Group Meeting last week. He offers up some highlights and posts the attendence at 1,900.

One bullet:

• GISmos: Post-session talk turned to the improved infrared-mapping capabilities that enable the Roomba wireless vacuum robot to learn its owner's floor plan for faster autonomous cleaning—a home version of robotic building-mapping systems discussed during the conference.

That'd be Sarah, the robot from PenBay Media. She'll be with us at our Location Intelligence Conference in April. I too have described her as "Roomba"-like, though she's better looking.

Tuesday, January 16. 2007

Podcast: Directions on the News - January 16, 2007

In our new weekly podcast covering the week's news Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg look at new products from ESRI and Ricoh, a significant GPS acquistion, an upcoming court date and explore the iPhone's lack of location awareness and new 3D modeling options with implication for GIS users. The podcast is 8 minutes (< 3 Mb) and was recorded January 15, 2007.

Here are the show notes. What are show notes? Links to all the things we mention in the audio.

Missed any podcasts? Here's the index.

Tuesday, January 9. 2007

Fed UC: No Elephants in the Room

I recall a year or two ago when Google Maps/Earth were new and Microsoft was gearing up with Live Local/Virtual Earth. There was a discomfort in the GIS community as we tried to figure these new offerings out and consider their impact on our world. At this event I noticed, and several attendees mentioned to me, how calm things seemed. Google Earth was shown on stage and Microsoft's products were mentioned. There seemed to be an unstated acknowledgement that these tools are part of the technology marketplace, even if they are not GIS per se and that that's ok.

Fed UC: Hottest Thing on the Floor

I'd heard of GCS Research, or thought I had, but when Tyler Otto, a salesperson told me about it GeoMarc technology I realized I didn't know the company - or the product. GeoMarc is technology to embed information in the pixels of an image, an invisible "watermark." What sort of information? Ownership information to track use of rights restricted imagery. Links to external documents that store say the different image manipulations the image has been through.

And, get this, the "watermark" stays with the image even if its converted to another form or printed and scanned back in!

The technology is actually a few years old, but is just out in its second (more mature) release.

Fed UC: Product News

While much of the formal presentation on stage focused around ArcGIS 9.2, specifically ArcGIS Server, Jack Dangermond shared a few new product tidbits:

- SDE for PostGres is expected in Summer (James Fee discussed the topic around the time of ESRI User Conference.)
- In addition to support for KML, ArcGIS Server will in the future offer support for Virtual Earth format. I asked Don Murray of Safe Software about that format and he said that it's expected but is not available yet.

Update on ArcGIS for AutoCAD 1/10: I spoke the ESRI staffer who did the demo to be sure I got this right. He confirmed the "product" is still a ways off and that documents about it delivered to the show "disappeared" - I suspect ESRI decided to hold off on too many details as suggested by Don's removal of data. More importantly, I learned that all that was happening in the demo was that a bitmap (raster) of the data was put into AutoCAD as a "backdrop" to the CAD entities; no AutoCAD entities were created, thus they couldn't be edited. But, he noted, you could do an "identify" and get back attributes from the server. That's based not on clicking on an entity, but passing the location of interest back to the server.

-original post follows-

There was also a reference to "ArcGIS for AutoCAD" which I understand to be an enhancement to make AutoCAD a full client to ArcGIS Server. By full client I mean can access data and services and the ability to edit data. One ESRI staffer suggested it'd be a free download that would enhance AutoCAD in this way. To me it sounds like a grown up, robust "CAD Client" which served a similar role in making CAD products clients to SDE, if in a more limited way. James notes that Don K. of ESRI pulled his post on his blog about this product.