Developing with CadCorp¶

date:: 2009-09-27 02:55
author:: admin
category:: programming
tags:: cadcorp
slug:: developing-with-cadcorp
status:: published

I’ve recently completed my first custom tool for CadCorp’s Map Modeller. CadCorp is most used in the UK, and it is apparently also big in Japan. The main benefit is that it reads many different spatial data formats directly, it can connect to SQL Server and Oracle without middleware (i.e. an SDE type application), and it is a leader in the open standards espoused by the Open Geospatial Consortium.

cadcorp

In terms of development the main issue is that there appear to be very few people developing tools around CadCorp’s products apart from CadCorp themselves. This means that the only code samples are in the help system installed with the tool, and a PDF file. Straying outside these samples I found involves a lot of trial and error. There is a forum on the CadCorp site - annoyingly registration is required to read the posts, and there are very few programming related posts. The CadCorp staff do however get back to you on any questions you pose.

Visual Studio and .NET languages can be used to create custom DLLs that integrate with the application. Prior to version 7 (the latest CadCorp release) custom code was run in a separate memory process, and Windows messaging used to pass messages between the custom tool and the CadCorp application. Fortunately this has changed so the DLL can run in the same memory space. The code below shows how to add two new menu items using VB.Net.

Public Sub AddMenus()
  Dim mainMenu As New SisMenuItem("Custom Tool")
  Dim menuB As New SisMenuItem("B", New SisClickHandler(AddressOf b))
  mainMenu.MenuItems.Add(menuB)
  Dim menuB As New SisMenuItem("A", New SisClickHandler(AddressOf a))
  mainMenu.MenuItems.Add(menuA)
End Sub

Strangely the two menu items would be listed on a new menu item alphabetically. Apparently this is by design, and hidden ASCII characters can be used to order the menus..

Each custom menu item has an associated sub procedure that is called when clicked. The example above expects two subs a and b. Each would look similar to:

Private Sub a(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal args As SisClickArgs)
  Dim mm As MapManager = args.MapManager
End Sub

The reference to the CadCorp application is passed in as an argument by default. One of my main gripes with development with CadCorp is that the programming model appears to be a based partly on objects, and partly on passing arcane strings into a huge “application” object. As these are strings they are not picked up be intellisense in Visual Studio and have to be found in the manual. I’m not sure why this is the case, as a simple wrapper could be created to avoid this. Maybe it is in development..

To illustrate my point here is a function to loop through all the layers (aka overlays), and find a layer with a particular name:

Public Function FindOverlayByName(ByVal mm As MapManager, ByVal sLayerName As String) As Integer
 Dim lNumOverlays As Integer = mm.GetInt(SIS_OT_WINDOW, 0, "_nOverlay&")
 Dim iOverlayPos As Integer = -1
 'loop through all overlays checking if the name matches
 For lCount = 0 To lNumOverlays - 1
   Dim sName As String = mm.GetStr(SIS_OT_OVERLAY, lCount, "_name$")
   If sName = sLayerName Then
     iOverlayPos = lCount
     Return iOverlayPos
   End If
 Next lCount
 Return iOverlayPos
End Function

The line to notice is mm.GetStr(SIS_OT_OVERLAY, lCount, “_name$”). There are many cases of passing and setting properties using the GetStr / SetStr approach, each one with a different third parameter.

Collections of objects have to be stored in lists, and can only be referred to by a string name. This makes code inflexible and hard to maintain. For example the code below finds the extent of all features in an overlay:

mm.CreateListFromOverlay(iLayerPos, "AllItems")
If mm.GetListSize("AllItems") > 0 Then
 myExtent = mm.GetListExtent("AllItems")
 mm.SplitExtent(x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, myExtent)
End If

The “AllItems” string is used to keep track of all the features in an overlay. Any string can be used (I chose “AllItems” for readability, and this could be saved in a variable, but it still seems starnge to the object-orientated world of .Net.

The tool is now installed and being used by ~15 users, and has a backend Oracle geodatabase, and seems to be going well. Next I’ll be trying out CadCorp’s web server GeognoSIS.

orphan:

Comments¶

1. Sebastian **

Great! Thank you for this solution. I have been looking for this for a long time.

2. Hector **

Hi,

Whaou, this is great ! I was also looking for this.

I got a question. Does the polyline draw should have a “buffer zone”.

I ask this because, i don’t get one. | I need to do a buffer around a polygon. Do you have any idea ? I should maybe think about getting the center of my polygon and calculate a circle like you did…

Thanks in advance for any answer.

Great job again.

Hector