Adding Basemaps from Consumer Map Services

I’ve created Paper Prototypes to communicate design goals and interaction flows of the Adding Basemaps from Consumer Map Services feature in AutoCAD Map3D to different stakeholders for different purposes:

• To be used by Senior Developers to clarify Use Case Documents further;
• To be used by Quality Assurance Engineers for high level test planning;
• To be used by User Researchers for the planning of Concept Validation studies.

User Problem

Without the capability of adding basemaps from Consumer Map Services, it takes our customers much time and effort to do it manually; customers end up going to Google, Yahoo! And Bing maps, grabbing images, then copying and pasting as their base maps: they wished they could do so easily and quickly.

Design Opportunity

This project — originally called Project Basejump for AutoCAD® Map 3D® 2013 and AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2013 software — was released as free technology preview that provides functionality for Adding Basemaps from Consumer Map Services by enabling users to access Microsoft® Bing® web mapping services (WMS) maps within AutoCAD Map 3D and AutoCAD Civil 3D.

With Project Basejump, AutoCAD Map 3D and AutoCAD Civil 3D software users can access Microsoft Bing data including aerial imagery, road, traffic, and other information within an AutoCAD environment.

Use Cases

Normal Flow

Based on the assumption that the interaction for bringing in data from Consumer Map Services is no different than any other type of layer in our customer’s maps, we’re considering enhancing the DATA CONNECT functionality, offering Consumer Map Services as a new FDO provider.

Alternative Flow

Some Consumer Map Services might required our customers to provide an API key, which must be obtained directly from the Map Service Provider:

Exceptions

In some situations, Map3D will not be able to connect to consumer map services:

Final Version

You can check the final working version of this feature at Autodesk’s Official Youtube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CduBjK2VzFA or watch the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CduBjK2VzFA

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