The Topobase Insiders

Street View

As a small demonstration of Topobase integration with external programs, we'll show a workflow plugin that uses Google Street View. This is the feature of Google Maps that lets you view the streetscape of roads that have been captured by cameras mounted on Google Street View cars.

The plugin allows the user to select a feature and see the street-level panoramic photo from the closest point that was 'driven' by the Google cars, if any. Not all cities are covered and not all roads will have Street View photos, but if the area you are interested in is covered, this ability could be a compelling sales tool or interesting demonstration.

The sequence of steps followed by the plugin is first to get a feature from the user, either from the PickFirst set or by asking the user directly. The coordinates of the feature (or first vertex of the feature) are then transformed to the WGS 84 lat/long system that Google Maps uses. The latitude and longitude are formed into a URL query for Google Maps that requests information about the nearest panoramic point like so:

"http://maps.google.com/cbk?output=xml&ll=" + lat + "," + lon

The XML result is parsed to extract the pertinent information (there is other interesting information we ignore). If no panoramic point is nearby, the fallback operation is to just show a plain Google Map.

Once the panoramic point is found, a much longer URL is created to query Google Maps and get a Street View. The format of this URL is described in detail at the Mapki Wiki, and includes such information as the panoramic point id, the latitude and longitude of both the pano point and the observer location, plus camera pitch and yaw - which unfortunately no longer work since Google Maps now uses a Flash player which doesn't support these parameters.

This URL is then provided to a browser embedded in a dockable AutoCAD palette, and this is then made visible in AutoCAD. Of course you could fetch the URL in an external browser as well. The operation is demonstrated in this movie:

This demo is available as a ZIP file which you can download using the link below. You will need accurately georeferenced data which is covered by Google Street View. To build this project, define the environment variable TopobaseClientDirectory to point to the Topobase Client directory and execute the solution file:

C:>set TopobaseClientDirectory=C:\Program Files\Autodesk Topobase Client 2010
C:>StreetView.sln

Build the solution. Next create a workflow called StreetView in Topobase Administrator containing the script:

Sub Run
  Me.RunMethod("StreetView.dll", "StreetView.StreetViewWorkflow", "Navigate")
End Sub

Run Topobase client and either execute StreetView from the Workflow explorer or execute it using TBEXECUTE. Select your feature and you should see the browser pane displayed.

AUTODESK DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SUCCESSFULLY DOWNLOAD OR IMPLEMENT ANY SAMPLE CODE. SAMPLE CODE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. AUTODESK PROVIDES SAMPLE CODE "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL AUTODESK OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF DATA, OR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, THAT MAY OCCUR AS A RESULT OF IMPLEMENTING OR USING ANY SAMPLE CODE, EVEN IF AUTODESK OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Download StreetView

Topobase help online

Great news for all the Topobase users and 3rd party developers. Autodesk just published the full Autodesk Topobase 2010 help on www.autodesk.com/topobase-help. It is now available online and accessible from everywhere you are.

Here you find the direct link to each of the user guides:

Administrator Guide - Describes administrator tasks such as designing forms, creating reports, establishing rules for job management, setting up users and groups, managing workspaces, documents, configuration settings and topologies, customizing workflows, and creating and editing the data model.
 
Feature Rules Reference - Provides a brief overview of the concept of feature rules and includes sections that describe the basic server-side and client-side rules, the rules that you can use with feature classes in the Coordinate Geometry (COGO), Template, and Plot extensions, and rules that you can associate with the specialized feature classes of the Topobase vertical application modules.

Client User Guide - Provides explanations and procedures for using Topobase Client to display, create, edit, and analyze geometry and attribute data.

Web User Guide - Provides concepts and procedures for using Topobase Web.

Electric User Guides - The North American and Central European Electric User Guides describe the data models and workflows specific to the electric industry in those regions.

Gas User Guide - The Gas User Guide describes the data models and workflows specific to the gas industry.

Land Management User Guide - The Land Management User Guide describes the data models and workflows specific to land management.

Survey User Guide - The Survey User Guide describes the data models and workflows specific to surveying.

Wastewater User Guide - The Wastewater User Guide describes the data models and workflows specific to the wastewater industry.

Water User Guide - The Water User Guide describes the data models and workflows specific to the water industry.

Developer’s Guide - Describes how to use the Topobase API and associated sample code.

Also AutoCAD Map3D and AutoCAD Civil3D have their documentation online.

The age of your features

Some weeks ago I showed you how to develop a DocumentAdminPage. This time I would like to take the same example and extend it a little bit.

The new plug-in does a pretty simple job. It goes through the TB_UFID table and analyzes when a feature has been modified the last time. The result of this analysis will be shown in the list view at the bottom. The plug-in also lets you decide if you want to analyze all or just some of the feature classes in the document.

Compared to the first version of the sample I have added a list of feature classes, an "Analyze" button and a list containing the results in the UI.

  

The main logic is implemented in the Analyze() method (called from btnAnalyze_Click()).

 /// <summary>
 /// Analyzes the TB_UFID table for the selected feature classes.
 /// </summary>
 /// <returns>The number of features grouped by <see cref="Age"/>. </returns>
 private HashMap<Age, int> Analyze(IEnumerable<FeatureClass> featureClasses)
 {
  // create the result hashmap
  HashMap<Age, int> results = new HashMap<Age, int>();
  ...
 }

The method itself is pretty simple. It executes the following SQL statement:

  select touch_ts from TB_UFID where f_class_id = {0}

for each feature class and then it categorizes the features by age (older than...).

You have now two choices, try to develop it by yourself (~200 lines of code) or download the project file from here: 

Topobase.Insiders.FeatureHistory.zip (10.9K)

Of course this sample plug-in is not yet finished! Still a lot of important stuff is missing. For instance the Analyze method is working in the GUI thread which prevents the user from interacting with the Administrator. There is also no progress of the Analyze method visible to the user. The user just has to wait until the method finished. We'll see if we can fix that for the next week :-)

AUTODESK DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO SUCCESSFULLY DOWNLOAD OR IMPLEMENT ANY SAMPLE CODE. SAMPLE CODE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. AUTODESK PROVIDES SAMPLE CODE "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL AUTODESK OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF DATA, OR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, THAT MAY OCCUR AS A RESULT OF IMPLEMENTING OR USING ANY SAMPLE CODE, EVEN IF AUTODESK OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.