U.S. Army - Integrating AutoCAD and GIS

Business Challenge

The U.S. Army was challenged by the need to combine GIS and AutoCAD data, while meeting U.S. Army standards. Coordinate systems vary between GIS and AutoCAD for U.S. Army standards. Many AutoCAD drawings are drawn at a scale, while GIS is generally entered using real world coordinates. Because of this, integrating AutoCAD drawings with a GIS database met skepticism at first, because it was believed that the data was incorrect due to coordinate system differences and scaling.

Solution

POWTEC’s solution was to establish a connection to enterprise GIS databases to:

1) Allow editing of GIS data via AutoCAD
2) Establish one database for GIS and AutoCAD data
3) Improve accuracy of AutoCAD and GIS data by comparing differences

Project Success

After using aerial imagery as a baseline to establish accuracy, POWTEC Solutions, LLC mitigated discrepancies between GIS and AutoCAD data. Proof of concept was established, and data migration was performed for GIS and software upgrades to AutoCAD, before implementing the full integration.