Can anyone give me some advice on getting GIS-styling symbols and polygon fills using the AutoCAD DWG writer?
I’m not an AutoCAD expert but have this week been getting to grips with concepts such as blocks. With help from a colleague, we’ve managed to create a template with blocks for a range of point symbols and got my Form script to output points to a layer referencing the appropriate block name so that an appropriate symbol appears. Note: I have too many symbol types to put each on a separate layer. Is this the use of blocks to implement cartographic symbols a sound approach?
The next thing I’d like to do is have some symbol fills for polygon features. e.g. trees representing woodland. What approach would be best to implement what would be a simple custom pattern fill in GIS software? I’m already aware than Form outputs simple polygons as normal, but complex ones (e.g. with holes) via sequentially named blocks. What about using custom hatches?
Finally, I’d like my AutoCAD drawing to have a metadata page which contains information about the data output from Form. Again, using a template, I’ve seen metadata implemented using blocks with named attributes. Does Form have the ability to alter block attributes to magically set my metadata page?
Regards,
Warren