[GRASS-user] 3D DXF output: howto?

[Benjamin Ducke]

Cool. Here are some from my grab bag:

Ever tried to export a shape format point map to DXF using ArcCatalog?
It's crazy: the input file cannot be placed in a path that has a
space in it (!) and none of the folders leading up to it or the
file name itself can have more than 7 (!!) characters. Now, try to
conform with this when you are in a networked environment and users
cannot directly access any drive letter! But it doesn't matter anyway,
because even if you get past this filenaming barrier, the exporter
will just fail miserably, without an error message or any result file!
I wonder how many more tools in the ArcToolbox fail in this way. My
nerves are just too thin to try them all, currently.

Did you know that Spatial Analyst cannot handle maps that are in a
customized projection? I found this out the hard way when I used a
"local" projection for one of my excavation sites. The only hint
was a report of the same problem on a Durch site. Solution: get rid
of the .prj file and ignore all of Arc's nagging. It's ridiculous.

But my all time favourite is the warning in the dialogue for exporting
a raster map's data into ESRI(!) raster formats in ArcMap 9!
What? A software that cannot correctly export data into its OWN formats?
How thick can it get?

Benjamin

Hamish wrote:
> Benjamin Ducke wrote:
> 
>>I could add some "fun facts" ...
> 
> 
> my favorite is one, as suggesed on a blog somewhere (slashgeo.org
> article?).
> 
> go to esri's website & "contact us" page. Try clicking the get
> directions to our headquaters link (Readlands, California) which takes
> you to an ArcIMS map server.
> 
> While you are waiting, open up a new tab and plug the address into
> google maps or your favorite UMN MapServer or PyWPS site, make some
> coffee, send some emails...
> 
> By now you can give up and close the Arc map, it never loads.
> (For me, the Arc site is totally non-functional, which is mostly my
> experience with all ArcIMS servers I've ever had to use. And people pay
> huge amounts for broken software because of the comfortable name. I
> don't get it.)
> 
> 
> Hamish
> 
> 

-- 
Benjamin Ducke, M.A.
Archäoinformatik
(Archaeoinformation Science)
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte
(Inst. of Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology)
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Johanna-Mestorf-Straße 2-6
D 24098 Kiel
Germany

Tel.: ++49 (0)431 880-3378 / -3379
Fax : ++49 (0)431 880-7300
www.uni-kiel.de/ufg