Ordnance Survey Mastermap

[stevemedlock]

Is anyone on the forum using British OS Mastermap within Autocad products?

I was hoping that Map 3D would be a complete product but yet again Autodesk seem to be leaving the job of providing a workable product to the third party developers.

But what additional software do I need to buy?

I'm almost of a mind to continue using Landline as long as possible.

[CADTutor]

As I understand it, MasterMap is as product designed specifically for GIS software (see here). As mentioned before on this forum, AutoCAD Map is NOT a fully fledged GIS product, it is an intermediate application sitting between GIS and CAD. As such, you can't expect to take full advantage of all the data provided as part of the MasterMap data set - for that, you will need a "proper" GIS application and not a CAD application with some mapping stuff tacked on.

From OS website: Autodesk Envision 8 has a free extension allowing the viewing of topographic layers from .gml files, the use of OS MasterMap address files for feature searches and the production of summary statistics.

I guess there may also be some 3rd party bits you can add but I reckon that will always be a compromise (more here).

See MasterMap CAD FAQ for more.

[stevemedlock]

Thanks Cadtutor - maybe thats the reality, but Autodesk market 'Map 3D' as a tool to "create, maintain and analyse maps". The only hint at compromise is where they describe it as "the foundation of your complete infrastructure management solution".

Map is a mature product now and its not cheap. its fundamentally about manipulating our base mapping data, Landline or Mastermap in the UK and that seems to be its greatest weakness. Its just not capable of selecting and importing the required data in a workable efficient way without buying yet more software.

[CADTutor]

Essentially, Map is just an AutoCAD flavour and not a GIS application. I think it was initially conceived as a bridge between AutoCAD and Autodesk's "World" product. If you take a look at Autodesk's own description of Map 3D, you'll see the phrase "connects CAD and GIS". It does not claim that it is a GIS application.