Working with Oracle UDT’s with AutoCAD Map 3D

Author: Jonio, Dennis

Within this series of articles I have pretty well illustrated Oracle’s ODP.NET working in "harmony" with Autodesk’s Map3d 2008. Also note that I have used Oracle XE throughout. The functionality Locator brings is certainly more than enough to build a reasonable GIS data store. I have not spent any time in outlining any of the other Oracle stored procedures like SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY_WITH_CONTEXT() these are all well documented across the internet. As I have said before, FDO is the way to go. But you still need to get that geometry built somewhere and put into a data store. "Map Export to FDO" is obviously a work in progress but hopefully will become a useful tool down the road.

Lessons Learned

• Always turn Connection Pooling OFF when working with UDT’s.


• Do NOT use the App.config method for UDT discovery that is described in the ODP.NET documentation. This does no work in all cases. It seems nested classes are not always resolved.


• Since your UDT class assembly(s) will be referenced from, in the default case: "C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Map 3D 2008", be careful of your naming convention.

Source code (C#):

using Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.DatabaseServices;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.EditorInput;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime;
using Autodesk.AutoCAD.Geometry;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Collections;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Data;
using System;
using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;
using Oracle.DataAccess.Types;
using NetSdoGeometry;

[assembly: ExtensionApplication(typeof(YOURCLEVERAPPNAME.Initialization))]
[assembly: CommandClass(typeof(YOURCLEVERAPPNAME.YOURCLEVERAPPNAME))]
namespace YOURCLEVERAPPNAME
{
    public class YOURCLEVERAPPNAME
    {
        public static string LocationOfDll;
        public static string forReadDwgFileInit = "forReadDwgFileInit.dwg";

        public YOURCLEVERAPPNAME()
        {
            Assembly callee = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            LocationOfDll = Path.GetDirectoryName(callee.Location);
        }

       [CommandMethod("YOURCLEVERAPPNAME")]
        public void mycleverapp()
        {
            Document doc = Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices.Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;
            Editor ed = doc.Editor;

            //
            // Must do this before any Oracle.DataAccess method calls.
            // If you start getting “First chance exceptions” in VS you know things are hosed.
            //
            Database Xdb = new Database(false, false);
            Xdb.ReadDwgFile(LocationOfDll + "\\" + forReadDwgFileInit,FileShare.ReadWrite, false, null);
            Xdb.Dispose();

            //
            // I do not understand but I needed this HERE to resolve sdo_geometry
            //
            sdogeometry NEED_HERE_TO_RESOLVE_sdogeometry = new sdogeometry();
            using (DocumentLock docLock = doc.LockDocument())
            {
                  // do whatever needs doing
            }
        }
    }//eoc YOURCLEVERAPPNAME

    public class Initialization : Autodesk.AutoCAD.Runtime.IExtensionApplication
    {
        public void Initialize()
        {
            Editor ed = Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices.Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument.Editor;
            Assembly caller = Assembly.GetCallingAssembly();
            Assembly callee = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            string callername = caller.FullName;
            string calleename = callee.FullName;
            ed.WriteMessage("Loader: " + callername + " initialize " + calleename);
        }

        public void Terminate()
        {
            Assembly callee = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            string calleename = callee.FullName;
            Console.WriteLine("Cleaning up..." + calleename);
        }
    }//eoc Initialize
}//eons