Working with Raster Data & AutoCAD Raster Design 2004
Written by GISuser
Friday, 12 December 2003
(GISuser Autodesk U feature) No GIS educational conference is complete without a session devoted to working with raster data. AU delivered in this area with a session devoted to working with AutoCAD Raster Design 2004.
For those of you unfamiliar with the product, raster design is suitable for applications that involve working with aerial photos, satellite imagery, and popular data products like digital raster graphics (DRGs). Additionally, users that need to convert existing legacy paper maps to digital and those interested in raster data editing and manipulation will also find this a useful product. On a side-note, an observation I made at this class was that most attendees of the session indicated that they were already working with AutoCAD Land Desktop.
Jumping right into things, we saw a useful demo where the task at hand was to locate and load a USGS quadsheet into a project. The quadsheet (TIF) was inserted and converted from NAD27 coordinate system to Cal. State Plane. To show off some of the powerful editing capabilities enabled by Raster Design the instructor then toggled on/off certain features displayed in the raster file based on color. The result was that only contour lines were made visible. Now imagine this, set the contours to display white and display on top of a black and white aerial photo of the same region. Now using raster to vector conversion utilities, auto or semi-auto conversion of the contours to vector line data (with 3D attributes) is very easily done… in short, we just created vector contours, with 3D values, from a freely accessible USGS quad sheet… sweet! Taking this one step further, using the “Object Viewer” capabilities, we can now view and rotate the project in 3D perspective.
So what else can a GIS user do with raster design?
Insert a gray-scale TIF image – Positioning an image is very simple and can be accomplished using know coordinates that are identifiable on the image.
Increase the variance or brightness of a portion or entire image.
Export Image – write out the new, rectified image along with all of its properties to a new file.
Adjust image density – Several methods of resampling can be performed, resulting in a reduction in file size. Tonal adjustments can also be performed. For example, dark portions of an image can be made lighter (or light portions made darker) without affecting areas that don’t require an adjustment.
Insert scanned survey plans – using a “raster snap” command, the image can easily be registered to a COGO line or existing CAD survey data.
Raster Editing – edit raster features, new features can be created and merged back into the raster, raster can be merged together, or vector data merged into a raster.
Text Recognition – powerful text recognition that really works. Users can set source text as either machine or hand drawn. The utility will recognize mixed case, and output can be formatted with a pre-defined font style and spell-checked. Rotated text is supported and text can be read directly into a table field.
Overall I found that Raster Design appeared to be very easy to use and offered functionality that I expected from other raster editing products but was later disappointed. I have no doubt that this is a very useful tool for the GIS user that works frequently with raster data like aerial photos, DRGs, satellite imagery, and other raster data products.
From the spec sheet:
control output with vector separation tools
bring details out of shadows
rubbersheeting
R/W georeferenced images to web with url support
Insert ECW and MrSID data
Raster snap
Support for multiple users
Create DWF output
Requires:
Windows XP, Windows 2000 or NT 4.0
One of Autocad 2004, Architectural desktop 2004, Land Desktop 2004, Mechanical 2004, Mechanical Desktop 2004, Map 2004
125 MB available disk space
Notes: Keep in mind, you can insert and work with raster data within AutoCAD Map, however, if you need to perform advanced operations and manipulation of the raster data then you will require the functionality offered in Raster Design. The product replaces
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(GISuser Autodesk U feature) No GIS educational conference is complete without a session devoted to working with raster data. AU delivered in this area with a session devoted to working with AutoCAD Raster Design 2004.
For those of you unfamiliar with the product, raster design is suitable for applications that involve working with aerial photos, satellite imagery, and popular data products like digital raster graphics (DRGs). Additionally, users that need to convert existing legacy paper maps to digital and those interested in raster data editing and manipulation will also find this a useful product. On a side-note, an observation I made at this class was that most attendees of the session indicated that they were already working with AutoCAD Land Desktop. 
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