AutoCAD Map 3D - Hyperlinking

By David Crowther

I was recently on a client’s site and we wanted to setup hyperlinks between map features (land parcels) in a SDF layer and photographs taken from surveyors while on site. Map 3D allows you to hyperlink from an object in the map window to any web address, however there is no option to hyperlink to other file types, such as images, pdfs or excel files. After a little consideration and some help from colleagues here is a useful workaround that will make this possible.

Firstly, you will need to setup a new Internet Information Service (IIS). To do this open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager on your PC, on the Connections window open up the list of Sites and then right click on the Default Web Site and choose to Add a Virtual Directory. Provide an Alias for the virtual directory, such as ‘surveyphotos’, then choose the Physical Path which is the location where the survey photos will be stored on your computer.

Within Map 3D select the feature in the map window that you wish to create a hyperlink from and open the Data table. In the data table choose a column to store our hyperlink reference and then edit the record to provide a link to the IIS and the relevant photograph. In the example below, I have created a local IIS and my photo is called Belton.png so the hyperlink reference will be:

http://localhost/surveyphotos/Belton.png

Note – by using an alias such as ‘surveyphotos’ you do not need to provide the full directory path of where the files you are linking to are located. Instead just use the alias folder name and then type the name and extension of the file.

Next we need to setup our tooltips within Map 3D. From the Task Pane right click on your SDF layer and choose Set up Tooltips, in the Hyperlink section tick the Web Address option and choose the correct column in your SDF layer and press ok.

Now if you hover over the object in the map window a tool tip will appear asking you to CTRL + click to open the hyperlink.

The hyperlink will be activated and a webpage will open displaying the associated file, in this case a photograph of a site visit.

You can now successfully setup hyperlinks between map features in Map 3D and different document types, including images, excel files and PDFs.