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GIS to CAD using ogr2ogr – Part 1 – Shp to DXF with Contour Data
GIS to CAD using ogr2ogr – Part 3 – Point Annotation to Text in CAD

For this example we are using Ordnance Survey MasterMap Topology Layer data.

MasterMap Topo Sample Data:

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/licensing/sample-data/discover-data.html

Now we know that we can maintain an attribute through layers, as we saw in the shp to DXF example, the export of MasterMap should be straightforward.

Let’s first see what the GML file contains.

ogrinfo -so os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml

Had to open data source read-only.
INFO: Open of 'os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml'
using driver 'GML' successful.
1: TopographicArea (Polygon)
2: CartographicText (Point)
3: CartographicSymbol (Point)
4: BoundaryLine (Line String)
5: TopographicPoint (Point)
6: TopographicLine (Line String)

So we have 6 layers in total.

For MasterMap in CAD we will be mainly interested in CartographicText, TopographicPoint, and TopographicLine.

Lets start with TopographicLine.

ogrinfo -so os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine

Nothing too useful.

A bit more details:

ogrinfo os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine

Sample:

OGRFeature(TopographicLine):185
fid (String) = osgb1000000347615024
featureCode (Integer) = 10019
version (Integer) = 5
versionDate (String) = 2005-03-30
theme (StringList) = (2:Buildings,Land)
accuracyOfPosition (String) = 1.0m
changeDate (StringList) = (4:1994-01-26,2003-11-10,2004-02-19,2005-01-05)
reasonForChange (StringList) = (4:Modified,Attributes,Attributes,Attributes)
descriptiveGroup (String) = Building
physicalLevel (Integer) = 50
physicalPresence (String) = Obstructing
descriptiveTerm (String) = Outline
make (String) = Manmade
nonBoundingLine (String) = (null)
LINESTRING (...)

For this feature the “descriptiveGroup”” seems the most useful, and from reading the os-mastermap-topography-layer-user-guide.pdf the best would be either a combination of descriptiveGroup and descriptiveTerm or using the featureCode. Since this is a simple conversion we will just use a combo of descriptiveGroup and descriptiveTerm to create our DXF layers.

I will be using || for concatenation, which works with the SQlite SQL dialect.

ogr2ogr -f DXF TopographicLine.dxf os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine -sql "select descriptiveGroup || ' - ' || descriptiveTerm as Layer from TopographicLine" -dialect SQlite

Result:

layer names ignored in combination with -sql.
ERROR 1: No known way to write feature with geometry 'None'.
ERROR 1: Unable to write feature 0 from layer SELECT.

ERROR 1: Terminating translation prematurely after failed
translation from sql statement.

Not quite. Seems to be missing geometry, perhaps a SQL select issue.

This can be tested with:

ogrinfo os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine -sql "select descriptiveGroup || ' - ' || descriptiveTerm as Layer from TopographicLine" -dialect SQLITE

Result:

OGRFeature(SELECT):14634
Layer (String) = Building - Outline

OGRFeature(SELECT):14635
Layer (String) = Building - Outline

So we do not have any geometry. Lets bring that in.

ogr2ogr -f DXF TopographicLine.dxf os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine -sql "select descriptiveGroup || ' - ' || descriptiveTerm as Layer, * from TopographicLine" -dialect SQLITE

Geometry looks good:

But if we check the attributes in QGIS:

We can see that all of the attributes that are not 0 have both a descriptiveGroup and a descriptiveTerm, which was not what we can see in the ogrinfo summary. So our SQL statement is cutting some out.

Try again:

ogr2ogr -f DXF TopographicLine2.dxf os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine -sql "select descriptiveGroup ||' - '|| coalesce(descriptiveTerm,'') as Layer, * from TopographicLine" -dialect SQLITE

Looking better:

But it won’t open in AutoCAD DWG TrueView. Lets try running it through a ShapeFile format first before the DXF conversion.

ogr2ogr TopographicLine.shp os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicLine -sql "select descriptiveGroup || ' - ' || coalesce(descriptiveTerm,'') as Layer, * from TopographicLine" -dialect SQLITE

ogr2ogr -f DXF TopographicLine3.dxf TopographicLine.shp

Success:

No indication of why a direct GML to DXF conversion would hang TrueView, and your mileage with other CAD software may vary. But ShapeFile is a very simplified geometry format, so perhaps running through that helps with some more complex geometry in the GML. Hard to say with no errors from TrueView, just a stuck program.

Repeat for point:

ogr2ogr -f DXF TopographicPoint.dxf TopographicPoint.shp

ogr2ogr TopographicPoint.shp os-mastermap-topography-layer-sample-data.gml TopographicPoint -sql "select descriptiveGroup || ' - ' || coalesce(descriptiveTerm,'') as Layer, * from TopographicPoint" -dialect SQLITE

GIS to CAD using ogr2ogr – Part 1 – Shp to DXF with Contour Data
GIS to CAD using ogr2ogr – Part 3 – Point Annotation to Text in CAD