PhotoGeoDWG. Users Guide and Administration Notes, Version 1.0.0

Transcription

1 PhotoGeoDWG Users Guide and Administration Notes, Version About this Document: The content of this document is an updated version of the documentation delivered with the plug-in. This document is intended for both end users and product software administrators. Legal: The CADmanage logo, PhotoGeoDWG, and the PhotoGeo icon and text are trademarks of CAD Management Resources, Inc. AutoCAD logos and images are registered trademarks of Autodesk. This document may be reproduced and redistributed as-is for training and administration of the plug-in only. 1

2 Contents Introducing PhotoGeo Overview Geocoded JPGs CAD, Cloud, and Geocoded Photos Command CMRIPHOTOGEO Usage Displaying Different Content Adding Content to Drawings Right-Click Controls UTM WGS84 Datum Options Tab Photo Album Folder (Local/Network) A360 Library File and Albums Units User Settings Install Folder Location Contents Removal 2

3 Introducing PhotoGeoDWG Did you take a bunch of photos last month and now you have to share them with your design team? Are you like me, often forgetting where and why you took the photos? Photogeo can help by combining Google maps with geocoded photos you saved on Autodesk 360. Use Photogeo to import camera locations to a drawing automatically, insert the photo to better convey design intent, or provide detail to existing conditions drawings. Photogeo remains connected to the digital asset with xdata and hyperlinks - unload the plugin palette and you can still control click to navigate to the photo. 3

4 Overview At the end of October 2012 we get this - hey we're going to have an AppHack contest at AU, you should submit an app. Ok, well, you know we're kind of busy, but maybe we could submit an app. Oh, it has to be new or something not already commercially available. Hmm. Well, we started talking about it two weeks before the contest deadline and the thing that emerged as the best candidate was an app that would link photos to marker locations in a drawing file. We remembered doing something similar for existing conditions drawings years ago - a very manual process, tedious, but effective once set up. Today we have maps, hyperlinks, on-line project folders and we thought, hey, it must be possible to mashup all of these technologies to create a plugin that connects google maps, Autodesk 360 project files (photos), and our drawing files. And one of us recalled seeing an episode of Myth Busters where they located a stolen car using a geocoded photo. Wait! That could work. We could automate placement into a CAD file, and automatically locate in a map. Put all of this on an AutoCAD palette and we have an app! Could we build this in less than two weeks? Turns out we could. Ok. So, that's great. But what can I do with it? Well imagine you're surveying a project site, walking a utility, or you are checking out a job site. Smart phones and digital cameras make it really easy to document existing conditions, utility assets, or map features. In the not so distant past, we would get back to the office and save the photos to a folder on our computer and probably to a network drive so others could use them. A month would go by before we went back a looked at the photos. Do you remember where the points of interest shown in these photos are or why you took them? 4

5 Geocoded JPGs When we take a photograph with our smartphones and digital cameras, information about the photo is saved to the jpg image file. This is what you can see when you right-click on the jpg in windows and select properties. This is called metadata. And there is some very useful data about the photo. Of course, we were most interested in the GPS coordinates - latitude, longitude, and elevation. If you type the lat/long coordinates into Google Maps search field it will show you where you took the photo. Amazing! 5

6 CAD, Cloud, and Geocoded Photos With photogeo we set out to combine these elements and make the technology accessible from the design environment. Start by dumping all of your photos into a folder. Then, tell photogeo where that folder is located and it will build a listing of the jpg files along with the location conveniently displayed in a palette. Click on a photo name to view the image. At the same time photogeo will locate the position of the photo on google maps - a quick easy reminder of where, and possibly why you took that photo. And if you are still are a little lost - click on the "open in google maps" button to get a street view. Your project site is probably there. No need for another site visit before your meeting. With photogeo you can also save your photos in the cloud. Take advantage of the powerful collaborative features of Autodesk 360. Upload your photos to your Autodesk 360 account, build a photogeo library, and then share the photos with colleagues in your office or around the world. In the past we would have tried to photos or set up an ftp site where external partners could get the photos. With cloud collaboration you no longer have to send large s - just send the library file and using photogeo your partners can work with the files immediately. 6

7 Photogeo provides several controls for managing camera markers. Bulk import camera locations, highlight camera markers, zoom to X,Y will help you manage and build your existing conditions drawings, features map, or punch list. You can do all of this just by snapping a few photos with your smartphone. 7

8 Command CMRIPHOTOGEO The command CMRIPHOTOGEO opens the photogeo palette containing a datagrid view of the photos and their location along with a map viewer and an image viewer to display the selected photo. A second tab called Options allows you to select both a folder based album, or an A360 photo album library file. You can also use the options tab to create a new A360 album library or edit an existing album library. A third tab labelled More tells you about other great offerings from CADmanage.com. Additional controls are included on the palette tabs. Usage is explained in the remainder of this article. Usage At CADmanage.com (CAD Management Resources, Inc.) we strive to build apps that are intuitive and easy to use. We also attempt to make the getting started process as simple as possible. With photogeo we have included a couple of sample datasets. The first is an example of a local or network drive based folder of geocoded photos. The second is a photo album library that links you to sample photos publicly shared via Mark's Autodesk 360 account. If you are a new user of photogeo, your main tab will be mostly empty with the following controls displayed in the map viewer (top panel). 8

9 Click the button labelled "Click Here!" which will take you to the options tab. There you can select the albums you want to work with. 9

10 At the top of the options tab you will notice that there is a "Try Sample" button inside the yellow block and to the right of the status prompt. Click this button to auto-populate the controls with the sample albums and libraries. The "Try Sample" button will change to a "See Photos" button. Click the "See Photos" button. Photogeo will automatically change back to the Main tab and select the first image in the local dataset. 10

11 To view a different photo just click on the name in the datagrid view list. Photogeo will change the photo viewer and display a new map view with a marker placed at the camera position. 11

12 Notice that the marker has moved down James Rd. from the intersection and is now adjacent to New Salem (Baptist Church). You can use the scroll bars to see more of the map, or expand the map viewer by clicking on the dark gray bar (splitter) separating the map from the photo. 12

13 When the photo loads it is zoomed out to half size. If you want to zoom in just use your mouse wheel. When zoomed in you can use the scroll bars to pan. You can also click and hold the wheel button (middle mouse button) or the left mouse button to pan. Displaying Different Content Below the datagrid view are seven buttons. To the left are four buttons used to control the content displayed in the datagrid view. To the right are three buttons used to add content to your drawings. (We will look at the three buttons to the right in a little bit.) 13

14 The left most button is the "From DWG" button. When you click this button photogeo will scan the drawing for camera markers and populate the datagridview with a corresponding list of photos. The second button is the "from Autodesk 360" button. This control will build a list by reading the current (active) A360 album, as selected on the options tab. Moving to the right, the next button is the "from Folder" button. Click this button if you want to load the contents of the current local/network folder as specified on the options tab. 14

15 The fourth button is used to "refresh/reload" the datagrid. If you make changes to the source album content you will probably want to see that content in datagrid view. For example, let's say you add additional photos to your network folder while photogeo is active. To see the new photos, click refresh and they will be added to the list. Adding Content to Drawings Ok. What about the next 3 buttons? From left to right these are "Place Single Marker", "Insert Photo in DWG", and "Add Camera Marker(s) to DWG". The first two buttons are interactive commands and will prompt the user for input. The last button is a bulk insert. It expects one or more photos to be selected in the datagrid and will add all of the selected photos to the file with a single button click. Let's explore each button more closely. 15

16 Use the "Place Single Marker" command to manually place a camera position in the drawing. This command allows you to override the geocoded coordinates, and you can give a different name to the photo (i.e. different than the file name). Tell photogeo where the file is located - this can be a location on a network drive or an http address. When you've finished providing the name and location, click the check mark and follow the prompts to place the camera marker. There may be occasion to insert a photo at the camera location of the feature you are attempting to document. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? The sixth button is the "Insert Photo in DWG" button. Use it to place the image currently selected in the datagrid into the drawing. What if I want the photo of the camera I just placed in the drawing? If it's the only camera position just click on the "from DWG" button then select it. If there are multiple camera positions in your drawing (likely) then click the "from DWG" button and then click (select) the camera position block (in the drawing) and the corresponding item in the datagrid will be selected automatically. Cool! 16

17 The next thing to do is insert the photo. Click the "Insert Photo in DWG" button and follow the prompts. We know that placing feature markers one at a time is a not fun. That's where the "Add Drawing Marker(s) to DWG" button comes in. Since we have a list of photos and we know where they are located we should be able to insert them into the drawing. Select the photos from the list (multi-select works, so does CTRL-A for select all).click the button. Watch the processing prompt at the bottom of the Main tab to see when processing is complete - view extents. Add some notes. Send your drawing and album library to your colleagues. You're done. 17

18 Right-Click Controls Yes, there's more. Select a photo in the datagrid and then right-click. There are four new controls here - "Open in Folder/Browser", "Zoom to X,Y", "Highlight Camera Marker(s)", and "Remove Camera Marker Highlights". These seem rather intuitive, but to be sure, let's examine each one with some detail. Show in Folder/Browse button will open the selected photo in either a folder or a browser. If the location is a web address it will open in your default browser otherwise it will attempt to open a window and select the file. Here's what you can expect. Zoom to X,Y will search the drawing to locate a matching camera marker. When it finds the marker, it will zoom the window about the marker place point and highlight it. otherwise it will attempt to open a window and select the file. Here's what you can expect. 18

19 Highlight Camera Markers will set the display of the camera marker block to highlight (dashed lines). If you have multiple photos selected then it will highlight all that have a corresponding marker in the drawing. Remove highlight turns off the highlight display for all highlighted camera markers. UTM WGS84 Datum For those who need to make this work in their environment, or for those who are just curious here's what we are doing... In order to work in a CAD file we need to project the 3D latitude and longitude coordinates onto a cartesian grid - that is X,Y. Because it's relatively straightforward we decided to implement a universal transverse mercator (UTM) projection with WGS84 Datum. For Civil3D users you can find a similar projection in the unit and zone section of drawing settings. Our algorithm is a little different in that it will select the zone automatically for you. But, understand that mixing zones in the same CAD file, while possible with photogeo, can cause drawing coordinate conflicts due to the use of a value of m for the central meridian. UTM - Universal Transverse Mercator, by Geokov.com UTM - Universal Transverse Mercator, Geographic Coordinate System, Idaho State University 19

20 Options Tab You now know how to use the sample photos and libraries that come with photogeo, but you re probably going to want to use your own photos. Just a good guess. This section explains how to use the options tab to select and create your own libraries and albums. Photo Album Folder (Local/Network) This is the easiest way to select or create new albums. Think of a folder of geocoded jpgs as being an album. So, if you want to group photos together then just drop them into their own folder. And, as the title of this section suggests the folder can be on your computer s local hard drive or someplace on your network. Once you have added photos to a folder you just have to browse to that location using the Photo Album Folder (Local/Network ): browse button. In the following example, I ve created a folder in C:\tmp\Utility_Photos\.When you click the browse button a standard windows browse folder dialog opens. 20

21 Click Ok to accept or cancel to return to the options menu. When you are done, click the refresh button located next to the browse button. This will load the photos found into the datagridview. That s it. Now click on the Main tab. Then click on the folder button. 21

22 A360 Library File and Albums If you are interested in using photos you have uploaded to your A360 account then you will have to create a library. This is an XML file with some special formatting that photogeo understands. It looks like the following, but you don t have to worry about building these files manually - the photogeo options tab will create and edit libraries for you. You will however, have to know how to define the location string for an A360 photo. Getting the download string from A360 The process might seem complicated at first but it s really quite easy once you have done it a couple of times. First, login to A360 and navigate to the documents tab where you have uploaded your photos. 22

23 Right click on one of the photos you have uploaded and move your cursor down the menu to highlight (but do not click) the Download option. When you do this there is an address string that displays at the bottom of the screen (I m using Internet Explorer to do this). That s the string we need, but there s no easy way to copy this, and typing it seems like too much work. But, there s a quick and dirty way to work around this. When you publicly share a file with A360 (which is what we need to do to make this work) it gives you an options to copy the share string. 23

24 The Copy button on the share dialog will copy the share address to your clip board. Use this string to paste into the location field when you define a photo in your library (instructions to follow). But replace the word Details in this address with the word Download. That s all you have to do and photogeo will be able to use your A360 photos. Oh, and make sure you turn on the sharing for the photos you want to use in photogeo. Creating a New Library File This is fairly easy to do. Click the new file button located to the right of (two buttons over) the active library text box. Browse to the folder where the library will live, type a name and click save. 24

25 Click save and the library name will be updated. At this stage you don t have any photo albums defined, and we ll need to add at least one so that we can add our A360 files to it. To add an album click the plus sign to the right of the library text box. When you do this, the controls will be temporarily replaced with a create text box and along with an accept button and a cancel button. Like this... 25

26 Type a name in the textbox like I did in the above image then click the check button (accept) to add the album to the library. It will be displayed in the listbox and the previous set of controls will be re-displayed. If you decide you don t want to create albums just yet, then click the X button (cancel). Should you decide you don t like this album then you can delete it. Be careful, because there is no undo. So, if you ve added a bunch of photos to your album you may not want to delete it. You can always back up the library file using windows copy command. Click on the album name to select it. You can now add your photo names and locations to this album. Notice that when you select the album for the first time the photo datagridview (bottom panel) is empty. There are a plus/minus buttons below this form. Use these to add and delete photos from your album. 26

27 Copy and paste the string share string from Autodesk 360 (see Public Sharing image above). Don t forget to change Details to Download. Add a photo name (it can be anything you want - see Considerations section below). Click the check button to accept and the photo is added to your library. Repeat for each photo you want in your library. Considerations: It is possible to mix local/network drive locations with internet addresses in this library file, and the image location found on-line doesn t necessarily have to come from A360. As long as it is a jpg image that photogeo can download with an http request (for those of you who know what this is) then photogeo will be able to process the location string will work. Notice too that location is a full file spec and includes the name of the file. The photo/name field is just a way for you to easily read and can be given any name you want. Keep in mind however, that the Add Photos command will look to match both name and location to determine if the photo camera markers have already been placed into a drawing, so if you have multiple versions of the same location spec, but with different names then photogeo will treat these as unique markers and will attempt to place all of them at the coordinates contained 27

28 in the source photo image file. Units The last option on the Options tab is a combobox for setting units. The UTM projections are calculated using meters and then are converted to to the unit you specify with this setting. Change the units to match your design standards. 28

29 User Settings The first time you run the photogeo plug-in it will look to see if it can find a file called usersettings.xml. This file is used to save the users Options settings between sessions. The plug-in will look for %appdata%\cadmanage\photogeo\usersettings.xml. If not found it will create this folder automatically for the user. If you update the plug-in, the file will persist and be used in future versions. So you don t have to reset the settings after an upgrade. Install Folder Location AutoCAD 2013 and Civil3D 2013: The installer package from Autodesk Exchange uses the %ProgramData% folder as the default install location. When install is complete, restart AutoCAD to activate the plug-in. AutoCAD 2012 and Civil3D 2012: The auto-installer for 2012 versions of AutoCAD will look in either the %appdata%\autocad\applicationplugins\ folder or the %PrgramFiles%\AutoCAD\ApplicationPlugins\ folder for plug-in bundles. So, if you want to run Photogeo with AutoCAD 2012 or Civil3D 2012 you will need to install to one of these two folders. If you install to the ProgramData folder you can move the plug-in to one of these two folders. Move the entire bundle to be certain that all resources are moved. This will ensure that Photogeo can find them when needed. 29

30 Contents The application folder contains the plug-in, icons, and help resources. Removal To completely remove the plug-in, delete the CMRI_PhotoGeo.bundle and the UserSettings.xml file (see User Settings section). 30