Manually Adding Data for use in InfraWorks

By Trevor Clayton

Many people forget that AutoCAD Civil 3D comes with Map 3D and just by switching workspaces the full gambit of GIS tools is available to you. This becomes very useful when preparing your data for use in InfraWorks when you just want to add some data manually. This is easy and straight forward utilising the tools found in the Map 3D workspace.
Figure 1

shows a very simple set of geo-referenced polygons. These are displayed in Map 3D with the GeoMap command invoked to show location. I want to add some object data that includes the density levels for each of the proposed developments within the polygons.

Simply select the MapSetup ribbon where you will see on the Attribute Panel the “Define Object Data” button. This will then display the box in Figure 2. It’s now a simple case of creating a new table and adding the field names and any default entries you wish to put in it. In this case I need a variety of entries so I have left the default blank

Figure 2

Once the table is complete just switch over to the “Create” ribbon and select the Attach/Detach Object Table. This is where we can select which objects need which table attached. Of course, you can create multiple tables therefore creating a variety of information for use further down the design process.

Figure 3

You can see in Figure 4 that the object data has been attached and can be viewed from within the AutoCAD Properties Panel. It can be edited here if required.

Figure 4

This can then be exported out as an Autodesk Spatial Data File (SDF). This is the file format I most commonly use when preparing my data for use in InfraWorks. In the second part of this Article we will go through how to make use of the data within the InfraWorks environment.