AutoCAD? and ArcGIS? Working Together
By Tom DeWitte and Tom Coolidge
AutoDesk ? in 2024 updated its flagship products (AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil, AutoCAD Map) to include a native tool called Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS. This new tool gives AutoCAD users direct access to ArcGIS portals. With this view-only connection to ArcGIS, AutoCAD users can add ArcGIS basemaps, living atlas data, and an organization’s portal layers to AutoCAD map displays.
Esri released an updated version of its ArcGIS for AutoCAD plugin for those same AutoDesk products a couple of months later. The Esri plugin differs from the AutoDesk tool because it allows the AutoCAD user to be an editor of the ArcGIS-managed data. The January 2024 update (version 430) enhances the editing experience by supporting branch versioning within AutoCAD. This branch versioning support further strengthens the incorporation of the AutoCAD editor into the data management workflows within the world of ArcGIS.
Eliminate the duplication
The ArcGIS for AutoCAD plugin solves this duplicate data entry issue by allowing the AutoCAD user to update their CAD drawing with the data edits made by the ArcGIS mapping team.
Now, a simple “Synchronize” from the ArcGIS ribbon in AutoCAD allows the AutoCAD mapper to update their AutoCAD drawing with the features created by the ArcGIS mapper.
Since the ArcGIS data maps an area much larger than the project area of interest to the AutoCAD mapper, a blue project area bounding box is used in AutoCAD to define the geographic extent of data of interest to the AutoCAD user.
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When the synchronization is complete, the GIS features within the project area are loaded into the AutoCAD drawing. No additional conversion, prep, or translation is required.
This synchronization with ArcGIS is more than simply bringing over geometries. It also brings over the feature's attributes, including coded value domain descriptions.
CAD And GIS working together
The increasing collaboration between Esri and Autodesk directly benefits Utility customers. The ability of AutoCAD to consume ArcGIS layers of data and basemaps simplifies their tasks for creating CAD drawings and improves their productivity.
Long gone are the days when the CAD community and GIS community were antagonists to each other. Now, we can all work off the same dataset.
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