AutoCAD Quirk: Escaping a Viewport in Paper Space

Normally you can just escape a viewport in paperspace by double clicking on the paperspace margin, but what if you were zoomed in too closely when you entered the simulated model space from paper space?

There is a button that exists just for such occasions and it is located with your snapping tools on the bottom toolbar. Unfortunately, a bug often prevents this button from appearing. So, in AutoCAD you need to click the tray settings dropdown in the bottom right hand corner and enable the "Model/Paper Space" button.

Arg, my paper space looks like model space!

Time Saving ArcGIS tip: Stopping Redrawing of large Rasters or Polygons

Doesn't it annoy you when you move the data pane slightly in ArcGIS and the whole image redraws?! I know it annoys me,

When you move the data pane and a large layer starts to redraw, simple punch ESC and the redraw will be cancelled. You may not be able to see the layer anymore, but rest assured, it's still there, it just hasnt been drawn on the screen.

Free Canadian GIS Data Sources - Complete List, will be Updated Periodically

The following list is a list I have compiled of Free Canadian GIS data. Before you rush out and buy expensive data, why not see if they have it here for free? The list has a lot of national data, but I apologize if it is a bit Ontario Centric. Since Ontario is where I do the majority of my work....

http://www.geobase.ca - Fairly updated, provides SPOT radarsat data for all of Canada. This is incomplete - should be completed by 2010. Also provides an up to date national road network, a hydro network for Canada. Landsat 7 10-30 m cell size satellite imagery for all of Canada.

http://www.geographynetwork.ca/ is a site published by ESRI Canada that provides free obm data for all of Ontario. You can find the free Ontario OBM data at : http://www.geographynetwork.ca/website/obm/viewer.htm specifically. All you need to do is sign up to get layers like forest, drainage, contours, roads and more. I should not that the data is often outdated and temporally sensitive features, like roads, may be quite out of date (circa 1998)

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html provides a whole gamut of Canadian geospatial data. There is simply too much to indicate here, you need to check it out for yourself. Some of the things I have used in the past are vegetation indices, population maps and more!

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss2006/DataProducts/RNF2006_e.jsp - Statscan only provides road networks for free and I have yet to explore the data. However, I have heard they are fairly up-to-date and provide street names in the attributes. The data apparently is as recent as 2007, which beats the geographynetwork hands down

More is coming soon on this topic.

Matching Object Locations in AutoCAD

Moving and rotating features is easy in AutoCAD, if you do not need to be precise.... However, if you precisely need to match one feature to another spatially. eg. you have an updating drawing that needs to go in the exact same space that the old version does (and youve moved the old version). Or; you may need to line up two different objects. With this guide, it will be a snap (no pun intended)

You can do this with two relatively easy steps:

1) Use the Move commands and set osnap on endpoint. Choose an endpoint on the new object that corresponds exactly with an end point on the other object... If you just want to align the two features and not overlap them, skip this step.

2) Once you have moved one point of the new object to match the old object, you will likely need to rotate the new object to fit in the same constraints. This next portion will tell you what to do at each prompt.
>Use the ROTATE command.
Specify base point:>Select a base point on the object you are moving TOO rather than the object you are moving.
Specify rotation angle or [Reference]>Choose the Reference Sub command "type reference"
Specify the reference angle <0>Select the corresponding point on the new object that you wish to rotate by (eg. the same endpoint)
Specify second point:> Select a point that, when combined with the previous point, specifies the angle that you want the new feature to occupy
Specify the new angle: > Choose a final point that specifies the angle of rotation

I realize that these directions may seem confusing, but experiment if you don't get it right on the first try. This seems to be the only way to do this in AutoCAD. In GIS, this type of a proceedure might be called georeferencing (if we were dealing with rasters), in AutoCAD this sort of 'georeferencing' can be referred to as 'frustrating'.

Dealing with an AutoCAD file that has not been scaled: Improper Scale in a DWG!

Have you ever been handed a drawing done by someone else? Have you ever been handed a drawing done by someone else who doesn't seem to have the faintest clue about layouts, scales, or plotting? Where I work, we get handed DWG files from many different consultants. Each of them is inept or dinosaurish in some way. One difficult problem that I frequently encounter is CAD documents that are not properly scaled or dimensioned and won't print to a standard layout!

Assuming you don't know the size of the paper it was originally printed on,

One way to overcome this is to follow this proceedure:

1) find a feature on the document that has a known length and measure it using the distance tool (di is the short cut)
2) divide this length by the scale
3) this number is to be used when you plot
4) Select plot, plot window (drag a box over the entire drawing), choose a ratio for scale (eg. 1 mm = 10 mm), then
5) Hopefully plotting should work!