CAD usage?

General talk
1

Good morning;

I’m working on finding a map program to use with my dispatch system.

How would I attach a OpenStreetMap to my CAD software? In other words, what’s the IP for the map files?

Or, can I download the files to my own server, and host them there?

–Jim R

2

Yes, you can download the data. “All of it” is quite large: https://planet.openstreetmap.org/ . If you just want an area, you can perhaps find what you want at http://download.geofabrik.de/europe.html .

However, that will just get you a pile of data. To do something useful with it you’d perhaps want to create map tiles (like the ones you see behind openstreetmap.org) from it: https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-18-04-lts/ , or load it into a database for name lookups: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim , or routing: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing .

Unfortunately this answer is a bit “how long is a piece of string” because there’s a huge variety of different things you can do, and what would be most appropriate to you would be difficult to guess.

3

Thank you;

I have a “large” number of GPS-enabled vehicles to keep track of, about 1500, in my state. I would like to use OpenStreets as an alternate map for those vehicles.

I would prefer to not download the entire state’s maps, and then build them into ESRI-compliant maps, I already have maps for my state, I was hoping to get an online map that is more frequently updated than the maps we currently make here.

–Jim R

4

Plenty of people use map tiles such as the ones behind https://www.openstreetmap.org/ for “background maps”. Be aware that there’s a usage policy associated with those - https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/ - and that might change in future.

If it’s only you and a couple of other “vehicle admins” looking at those maps you’re unlikely to fall foul of that tile usage policy, but if it’s anyone who might order a parcel delivery that’s a different matter.

5

Thank you for your prompt response.

This explains a lot. I’ll have to discuss this with my boss, and the vendor.

–Jim R