AutoCAD Map 3D: Handling Styles and Labels

Features such as roads, parcels, or poles are generally stored in a database or data store as raw geometry; that is, they are simply georeferenced lines, polygons, and points (although they also have a non-spatial aspect, which consists of associated attribute data). When you want to create a compelling map for publishing, you will almost always want to style the raw feature data in some way. Styling is the process of assigning display characteristics (such as line color, line pattern, fill color, fill pattern, and so on) to the feature. In AutoCAD Map 3D, the style is applied to the layer and is stored as part of the layer definition. The underlying feature data is not changed in any way.

You can save a lot of time by sharing layer styles that have already been defined by other users for their maps and reusing them in your own maps. See the first workflow in this section for an example of how this process works.

Another aspect of styling is theming, which is the process of styling maps according to an attribute value, for example, creating a theme that colors polygons representing districts according to their population.

You can style or theme maps in AutoCAD Map 3D and then use Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise or MapGuide Open Source to distribute those maps across your enterprise or externally on the Internet. MapGuide recognizes the styles and themes that you created in AutoCAD Map 3D; therefore, you do not need to reapply them when you want to publish your work to a wider audience. Because AutoCAD Map 3D and MapGuide use the same FDO providers to access features sources, when either program accesses those features in a layer that has styles defined for it, the layer appears with the correct styling and theming. This allows you to create Web-based applications in which edits to the central data are automatically reflected in MapGuide and become immediately available to users of the MapGuide application.