Many of my posts this semester have discussed the integration of CAD and GIS for Temple’s campus to build a better campus map.  This is a process that many universities have been doing in order to understand more about the data that lives on their campus.  Having a better visualization of the campus ultimately improves the experience for students, staff, visitors, and the larger community.    Here are a few examples of institutions with excellent campus maps and what makes them impressive:

University of Arizona

The University of Arizona has an exceptional collection of campus data available on their website.  I picked University of Arizona for this list because they made several types of maps for different audiences- such as the public campus map, the private university interior map, or the campus sustainability map.  All the maps look different and are for unique audiences, yet still have a tremendous wealth of information, an easy to use interface, and look graphically appealing.

University of Maryland

A campus plant inventory!  Designated smoking areas! Bottle filling stations!  The University of Maryland campus map truly sets the bar for campus information.  Also, the map includes a helpful Overview Map and a search feature that is very easy to use.

Arizona State University

Arizona State has one of the most beautiful campus maps you will see.  They worked with the company CampusBird to produce a series of illustrative maps that look more like a classic retro video game instead of an education institution.  Additionally, they have a remarkable amount of information including the species of every tree on campus and high-quality panoramic images of campus landmarks.

ESRI Campus Viewer

The ESRI Campus Viewer is a demo campus application that ESRI is developing to make 3D campuses.  As you could see, it isn’t perfect but almost all applications visualizing floorplans in 3D struggle to be easy to navigate.  There is a fantastic wayfinding tool built in to get from room to room, but it still looks like there is some way to go until this is a viable option.  However, it’s worth keeping an eye on how the Campus Viewer tool is developed because it won’t be too long until universities start considering developing 3D campus maps.

Having a multitude of data on the campus means that different departments can work together to analyze campus problems.  For example, Campus Safety and Sustainability could work together to understand the patterns of bike thefts on campus.  Furthermore, emergency management can work with scheduling to understand when and where students are at certain times of the day in order to plan for an emergency.  This type of deeper understanding of the campus is essential to understanding how space is used on campus.

While ArcGIS Online provides a lot of great functionality out of the box, sometimes there are levels of customization that can only be brought about by designing a webmap programmatically. Fortunately, there are several Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that take care of a lot of the baseline programming required for creating a custom webmap. Two of the most popular APIs include Leaflet and the ArcGIS API for Javascript. Although Leaflet is what is taught at Temple in GUS 4064, Web Mapping and Map Servers, I will be focusing on the ArcGIS API for Javascript. The concepts are the same, however, the ArcGIS API provides built in support for vector (SVG) path map graphics, which will be the focus of the next blog post. This post will focus on the basics of getting a webmap up and running using the API.

Unlike its desktop environment counterpart, the ArcGIS API for Javascript is free to use. They do, however, charge you to utilize their more advanced online analysis services, such as performing network analysis or geocoding locations. For the purposes of creating a simple and interactive webmap, what is provided for free should suffice.

The first step is to download a code editor that will allow you to write code for basic web development. There are many options that will work for the purposes of this blog post, and you may already have a favorite picked out and installed. After installing your code editor of choice, create a working directory where you will save all of the files create which store your code. Once you have the directory created, open the newly installed code editor and create a blank / empty document. Save this document as Index.html into your working directory. This will both create the file in which your code will be saved, but also let your editor know that you are going to be writing an HTML document.

By following the instructions on this page, I was able to create a functioning webmap based off of the code below:

Code to Create a Basic Webmap

There are three primary components to a basic webmap using the ArcGIS API:

1. Referencing the ArcGIS API, this line essentially attaches your code to all of the functionality that has been pre-programmed and designed by ESRI.
2. Create the map HTML element (above 2). This creates a div element in the HTML page that will be fill with the map content. Below 2, Initializing the function that creates the map. This is a Javascript function that actually creates the map seen in the div element. You can set properties in this function, such as the basemap (more can be found here), an array containing the default map center, and default zoom level.
3. Lastly, setting the CSS style to take up space in the browser window. You don’t have to use 100%, but the body / map must use some portion of the window in order for you to see it.

Opening the Index.html file by either running it from your code editor, or opening it from the file explorer will allow you to preview the map you have created.

A Basic Webmap

Complex CAD files often come into the GIS software with an overwhelming amount of layers.   This makes it very difficult to work with the data to identify useful layers and often drastically slows down your computer.  This post will walk through a way to convert only the necessary CAD layers into a geodatabase, instead of sifting through the unneeded layers, lines, and details in GIS.  The demo script walks through my process of importing the room polygons of Temple’s Alter Hall and converting them to a geodatabase to later join with our university room database.

Step 1:  #Import System Modules

import arcpy

Don’t forget to import ArcPy!

Step 2: #Establish Workspace Environment

arcpy.env.workspace = “C:/Users/tug28727.TU/Desktop/cad_dwgs/alter”

This line establishes your workspace.  Select the location where your CAD Drawings are.  For my script I used the folder location for Alter Hall.

Step 3: # Create a value table

vTab = arcpy.ValueTable()

A value table is necessary to hold input feature classes when you run a merge later in the script.

Step 4: # Create Geodatabase

arcpy.CreateFileGDB_management(“C:/Users/tug28727.TU/Desktop/cad_dwgs/alter”, “alter.gdb”)

A geodatabase needs to be create to store all of the features.

Step 5: #Identify CAD drawings and Create Features from CAD Layers

for fd in arcpy.ListDatasets(“*.dwg”):
     layername = fd + “_Layer”
     # Select only the Polygon features on the drawing layer rooms
     arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(fd + “/Polygon”, layername, “\”Layer\” = ‘RM$'”)
     vTab.addRow(layername)

First, this cycles through all of the files in the workspace and identifies those files that end in .dwg- which are the CAD files.  Next, it creates and layer name.  After that, it creates features searching for whatever CAD details you want to add (here I am searching for Polygons on the RM$ layer).  Lastly, the features are populated on the value table created in step 3.

Step 6: #Merge into one Feature Class

arcpy.Merge_management(vTab, “C:/Users/tug28727.TU/Desktop/cad_dwgs/alter/alter.gdb/rooms”)

This tool merges all of the CAD features from Step 5 into one feature class in the geodatabase we created in Step 4.  If you wanted to merge the value table with other data you would add brackets and commas separating the data to merge where the vTab is located (ex. [vTab, “alter_rooms.shp”], “C:/fake_cad_folder/all_buildings”).

This script should successfully search through your workspace files to identify CAD drawings, and bring in the layers you want in a geodatabase.   Step 5 is where you are able to change which CAD layer you are looking for.   This script hopefully streamlines your process of import CAD files into GIS.  ArcGIS has plenty of resources on CAD and GIS integration located here.