Dubai Land Department hires Altiva Software to write an automated batch clean routine for legacy drawings

January 6, 2012 (Houston, TX) – Altiva Software announces Dubai Land Department has hired Altiva to develop and enhance a custom LISP and ARX program. The routine originally written earlier in spring 2011 helps automate processes in cleaning digital data for re-use in populating the Land Department's GIS data warehouse.

"The number of lands registered at the Land Department exceeds 50,000 plots all over the emirate. The process of registering real estate data is entirely computerized. All procedures related to sale, purchase, and mortgages are conducted electronically. The Land Department has left the era of manual work behind, keeping pace with advanced technology, which allows the department to provide clients with quality and time-efficient service." (www.dubailand.gov.ae)

While Marie Franklyn, Altiva Business Development Manager, was onsite last February visiting the Dubai Land Department gathering CAD standard requirements, the Survey Section expressed their desire to automate the 14 steps required to clean hundreds of drawings that are used to populate their GIS database.  “Before, we had no practical way to automate the cleaning process of every drawing needed for re-use in our ARC GIS system; it was a manual process that could take minutes per drawing.  It was humanly impossible and very costly to achieve this level of conformance”, explained the IT Manager.

The requirements for a custom program were sent to Altiva's development staff and two days later a beta version was delivered. Of the 14 steps required to clean the drawings, a sample of the automated functions requested were:

• Open files in batch

• Explode all entities

• Purge nested items

• Purge zero length geometry and empty text objects

• Save files in an AutoCAD 2007 format

GIS technicians at the Dubai Land Department used the routine for several months requesting enhancements with each new set of drawings from different contractors. Since CAD Standards were never enforced, every contractor that submitted drawings had different problems which prevented batch importing. So functionality was added to:

• Delete – Frozen Layers / Hidden Layers

• Delete – Solid and hatches

• Delete – Paper space / Layouts

• Solved problem with Locked Layers so all points could be deleted

• Removed any entity outside the view extent area

• Removed external reference files, unresolved references and image references

• Delete "corrupted annotative objects" (Objects without scale)

With all the enhanced functionality requested over 10 months, the final version was delivered December 12th. Now it takes just seconds to generate clean drawings while running the application across several folders of legacy data. Currently, the Land Department has automated the process of cleaning 21,914 files.

Altiva Software will be the software development company of choice from now on.

The Land Department was established on January 24, 1960 (26 Rajab 1379H) by a Decree signed by Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the late Ruler of Dubai. The Decree stated: "We have decided to establish a committee to oversee affairs related to land and private properties in the emirate, in order to register these lands and properties in a systematic and effective manner and to safeguard the rights of our people. The Government of Dubai Land Department is the real estate registry for the Emirate. It is responsible for registering built and un-built land, villas, apartments, commercial and residential buildings, leases and mortgages throughout Dubai including the designated freehold areas. It is Dubai's official registry, value, auctioneer, regulator, information provider and property overseer. Land Department has developed in sync with the rapid growth of Dubai."

For more information about Dubai Land Department, see here.

CADconform® is a software add-on that works seamlessly between AutoCAD® and MicroStation® to promote and enforce 100% conformance to CAD standards. It is the only product of its kind that provides an encrypted, tamper-proof electronic seal ensuring data integrity and user confidence.

Properly enforced CAD standards provide strategic business value including: re-use of intellectual property stored in drawings, better interoperability and project management, and significant cost-savings and contributions to HS&E.

Altiva Software is the only company dedicated to 100% conformance to CAD standards. It is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Germany and Australia.

Visit us on the web at www.altivasoft.com.

CADconform is a registered trademark of Altiva Software, Inc. AutoCAD is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc. MicroStation is a registered trademark of Bentley Systems, Inc.

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