PenBay media

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Pen Bay Media (PenBay), a professional firm specializing in the implementation of geospatial applications, used ADR to automatically convert, from CAD to GIS, 286 floor plans of buildings owned by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama (STRI)

 

    The need to convert CAD to GIS:

 

In preparation for the implementation of Geospatial Space Management system for STRI, their CAD floor plans had to be converted into GIS data format. The underlying data structure for the Geospatial Space Management solution is the Interior Space Data Model, hence, all CAD drawings had to comply with the Interior Space Data Model.

 

    Choosing ADR

 

While Pen Bay might have been able to perform the conversion with ESRI out-of-the-box tools, ADR was the only solution that could automatically validate the original CAD floor plans, make sure they were ready for conversion and also perform the actual conversion.

 

    Prepare data for GIS Conversion

 

Drawings were validated by ADR against STRI design standards. Errors found, were detected (and fixed), enhancing the quality of data which was imported into the application. Additionally, incompatibility between CAD format and GIS Data Model were detected as errors, hence, CAD drawing elements were not converted to GIS unless they were defined in the GIS Data Model.

 

Additionally, ADR automatically prepared floor plans for conversion by creating closed polygons for rooms as well as creating boundary lines for doors and windows in order to match the GIS Data Model.  (Regular CAD floor plans do not contain room polygons and space boundaries).

 

  The project:

 

286 CAD floor plans were automatically converted into GIS Interior Space Data Model and were made available for the Space Management system.

 

     Summary

 

Today, STRI owns and manages its Space data under a GIS solution.

Using ADR for converting floor plans enhanced data quality as well as minimized manual work, all resulting in saving time and money.