What’s New In ArcGIS 9.2 for CAD: Part 8

Block Attributes and Tags as Annotation

With the increase in home values and housing costs these days it is becoming less likely that any of us who have bought a home in the last couple of years will ever actually pay off our mortgage. My monthly property tax bill is more than the previous owner’s mortgage payments on the same property (Granted the previous owner was the original owner of the house and he had bought it over 40 years ago.)

I’m wondering, is my goal to make sacrifices over the next 30 years and pay off the mortgage, and reduce my costs in old age? Or, do I consider my home an investment that I will cash in to pay for my retirement some time in the future? If so, who cares if I pay it off or not? If I were a financial advisor I might warn myself against putting all of my eggs in one basket, or making my nest egg in my…a… roost…or… (I think my analogy has gone wrong)… anyway diversify, yes diversify… I guess.

Well… I come back to the question again; is my house a lifestyle and quality-of-life asset or is it a financial investment? Since a Blog is a conversation you have with yourself, I will answer myself. Both… the answer is both. Homeownership is both a quality of life choice (something you would pay money to have) and an investment (something that can increase in value and provide you an income over time).

In ArcGIS Microstation tags and AutoCAD block attributes are considered tabular attributes of a CAD entity and in most cases that is how they are used in CAD maps. For that reason when ArcGIS views a CAD drawing as a set of features it has always included the block attributes and tag values in the feature attribute table of the CAD features.

It is common in ArcMap to annotate features in a map with attributes values stored in a feature’s attribute table. The same thing is true in CAD. The fact that block attribute values are visible or invisible is enough to warrant similar treatment in ArcGIS. Tags and block attributes SHOULD be included in the ANNOTATION feature class of a CAD feature data set.

In ArcGIS 9.2 Microstation tag values and AutoCAD block attributes ARE included in both the feature attribute table of the entities they are linked to as well as being included as annotation in the CAD Annotation feature class. Previously I would have to use the labeling feature of ArcMap to make the block attributes visible, by selecting the tag or block attribute as the field to label. Or, I would have to convert the values in the attribute table to a geodatabase annotation feature class as a separate step in ArcMap.

Continue to Part 9