[postgis-users] PostGIS + AutoCAD integration

[Arnaud Lesauvage]

Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone has any references to any work done to
> integrate AutoCAD (or Map3d) with PostGIS, and vice-versa?
> 
> Also, if such integration does not exist, is there a demand for it?

I haven't found anything like that yet.

For my needs, I wrote simple VBA procedures that convert WKT 
strings to Autocad entities and vice-versa, but they are too basic 
to be released publicly.
There are some issues quite hard to resolve. For example, there is 
nothing like arcs or circles or elipses in PostGis. The OGC 
specification only knows about linear objects.
In the other way (PostGIS to Autocad), we have to make assumptions 
that are not trivial : what would be a polygon in Autocad ? A 
polyline, a Region, a Hatch,... ?
More complicated : how to handle polygons with holes in Autocad ? 
With regions ? But they are very hard to work with.
And in general, how to handle multi-geometries in Autocad ?

I have not really searched for an answer to this questions yet, 
but I am interested in any attempt to interoperate Autocad and 
PostGIS !

Regards
--
Arnaud