[Qgis-user] Crowd funding campaign for importing CAD files in QGIS

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi,

Local governments on the municipality of provincial level often have to 
deal with DXF/DWG/DGN documents delivered from architects, urban 
planners or engineering companies. As an example, cadastral or utility 
offices or companies often have to import CAD documents to either check 
deliveries about correctness or import selected objects into their 
central database. Another requirement is being able to visualize planned 
objects, such as buildings or bridges alongside with the cadastral data.

QGIS lacks proper import of CAD data so far – DXF files can only be 
imported on very basic levels (without styling and labeling), DWG files 
can’t be imported at all.

A requirements document 
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NJv1lwd5TnWdV-fTuW7g5ts1O8r3vb46xYeAIQ_BwGw/edit?usp=sharing> 
(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NJv1lwd5TnWdV-fTuW7g5ts1O8r3vb46xYeAIQ_BwGw/edit?usp=sharing) 
has been written to implement import of DXF/DWG (and potentially also 
DGN) files into QGIS, while maintaining styling, labeling, 3D, curves 
and blocks.

The company Norbit, with Jürgen Fischer, submitted an offer 
<https://drive.google.com/a/qgis.org/file/d/0B0h3PAH5uoY6c2hHTlBvWjdqQTQ/view?usp=sharing> 
(https://drive.google.com/a/qgis.org/file/d/0B0h3PAH5uoY6c2hHTlBvWjdqQTQ/view?usp=sharing). 
Jürgen is a long-term QGIS developer and QGIS.ORG board member. Norbit 
has extensive experience with bridging GIS and CAD.

The plan is to use the Teigha library 
<https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha> 
(https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha) of the OpenDesign 
Alliance (ODA) <https://www.opendesign.com/> 
(https://www.opendesign.com/) to read the CAD documents. Either QGIS.ORG 
or OSGeo would become a member of the ODA, to get access to the source 
code and for distributing the Teigha libraries with QGIS binaries.

At this time we are looking for organisations or companies that help 
funding the effort. The offer from Norbit is over 32k €. We are looking 
for institutional crowd funders with minimum contributions of 1k Euros. 
If you are interested in contributing, please contact by mail at andreas 
(at) qgis (dot) org.

Thanks and greetings,
Andreas Neumann