AutoCAD Map 3D: Accessing an ESRI Personal Geodatabase

We had a great group of students in our AutoCAD Map 3D Class April 27 - 29. I enjoyed their participation and they asked some great questions. They were really thinking about the topics we covered, and based on the questions you could see they were thinking about applying the new knowledge at work. The students varied in job roles from a CAD Manager to an ESRI expert. One student managed the City of Petersburg's facilties which included cemetary plots. Since 1987 I've taught a lot of people how to use Autodesk tools, but this is the first time I've had a person that manages cemetary plots in my class. 8-)

One of the students spent a tremendous amount of time researching and setting up AutoCAD Map 3D to access an ESRI personal geodatabase. He was nice enough to bring in the .dll file and .xml code to class on the last day so we could learn from his experience.

In order to access an ESRI personal geodatabase you need two items. First you'll need the .dll file. This file must reside in the FDO\bin directory. It's typically located here:

C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Map 3D 2009\FDO\bin

The second item you'll need is the new .xml code. This code must be added to the providers.xml. This file can be edited using notepad and it's located in the same directory as the .dll file.

We weren't able to get this configuration to work in AutoCAD Map 3D 2010 but it did work in AutoCAD Map 3D 2009. If you would like the .dll file and .xml code, please send me an email and I'll send it to you.