[Mapserver-users] Reading DWG

[Frank Warmerdam]

Stephen Clark wrote:
> Frank and others,
> 
> My two cents:
> 
> I have tried using the opendwg software with not much luck.
> 
> I am now interested in FME from Safe software. www.safe.com
> It has scripting abilities via a perl system command that can convert DWG to
> SHP, vice versa and many more tricks for handling spatial data.
> 
> My plans with DWG files are to automate the viewing of many of my DWG  files
> on top of the SHP files I already have.

Stephen,

FME is (in my somewhat biased opinion) an excellent translator and with a bit
of work should give you all you need in DWG to shapefile translation.  I would
add that those with FME licenses should be able to use the FME/OGR gateway
to directly read FME supported vector formats in MapServer.  However, this
isn't a particularly high performance approach so unless you need dynamic
translation I would encourage batch translation ahead of time with FME.

I would add that FME translation to shapefiles is going to result in alot
of sophisticated rendering information being lost, though with effort you
could capture some or all of it in Shapefile attributes.

Best regards,

-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent