FUSING IN CAD CAPABILITIES INTO GIS. BY HONEST S. O. U.
ArcGIS as a GIS software lacks some cartographic capabilities for drafting of work. We are often left with converting/ exporting our GIS work into a CAD environment and after some modifications in CAD environment, the work is exported back to ArcGIS environment. GIS lacks some conventional cartographic signs and symbols and does not allow free sketching of such signs/ symbols, a times we make do with Adobe Illustrator and other softwares to aid us. The question therefore is, how can we fuse in CAD capabilities into GIS environment? I found out a simple method of doing this. You can convert your shape file to CAD file. Without closing the ArcGIs, open the CAD file and do the necessary modifications on the CAD work. Use layer plotting for all text files, signs and symbols so that they can come out as layers in ArcGIS. After all the modifications both the layout and adjustments in the digitized features (Point, Line and Polygon) .Save your CAD work and open your ArcGIS file which u minimized and you will find all the modifications on your ArcGIS. Cheers.
STEPS FOR CONVERTING YOUR ArcGIS SHAPE FILE TO CAD. 1.Goto ArcToolbox.
2.Select Conversion Tools. 3.Select to CAD. Select ,Export to CAD. Under Input Features, (select the shape files you want to convert). Under Output Type( select the DWG- the AutoCAD version u want to save it), Under output file(Select the folder you want to save it). 4. Select Ok and wait for the files to convert/export to CAD. When its successful, it pops out successful message on the ArcGIS environment