Q; I have AutoCad and have asked for a dxf from someone with GIS MapInfo, but what I am getting (basic OS data, like ProMap) is all on one layer, I hope that the trees, boundary, roads etc are on separate layers and wonder if the export system is doing something to put on one layer, layer ‘0’.
I just wonder if any of you with GIS knowledge has seen this?
Luckily it is fairly easy to update the layers as it is simple data, but worth understanding any GIS export issues?
Cheers
C

If it’s something like OS mastermap all line features are likely to be within the same layer in Mapinfo but styled based on attribute data contained within. Exporting to dxf/dwg loses all this styling info (and often all the attribute data as well depending on the export method used)

They need to export to .TAB, and then Autocad can import it sensibly as layers. (OH is a lapsed MapInfo admin.)

it depends on the input layers; so if you only have one ProMap layer, then you’ll get one dxf export file. We have OS MasterMap split by points, lines and polygons, so if I convert these layers, I get a dxf for each object type. I’m not familiar with ProMap, but if I want to split OS MasterMap, then I’d have to do an sql select by an attribute, for instance descriptive term = “roads”, and then export the query to dxf.

It sounds like they’ve just exported everything on one .dxf without splitting them (unless their mastermap is in just one layer) into several of them; I find MapInfo is far better and easier to export as .tab’s than .dxf’s for the reasons ebygomm said.