Using OpenCities Map Advanced. Downloaded county-wide spatial and tabular soil survey data from the USDA NRCS Web Soil Survey. The tabular data is in *.mdb format. How do I pull the *.mdb file data into the dgn map to associate it with the spatial data?
I would have to try this to test the specifics of how it would work, can you provide a link to the data?
This 'Join' article may lend some ideas:https://communities.bentley.com/products/geospatial/desktop/w/geospatial_desktop__wiki/23068/--create-a-join-between-microsoft-excel-and-esri-shapefile-data.
Here is a link to an example set of soil data for Camden County, NJ:
https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/DSD/Download/Cache/SSA/wss_SSA_NJ007_soildb_NJ_2003_[2020-06-01].zip
I'm trying the article, but just at step 3 it seems the instructions no longer apply to the current interface. Searching ODBC in the OpenCities Map search ribbon brings up nothing.
I am looking to join the muaggatt.txt table, specifically column 18. I think I have a working plan.
1. Converting the .txt file to a .csv file.
2. Right-click on the shapefile layer in the map manager to select the JOIN tool
3. Select the .csv file in this JOIN dialog box. Select the matching features between the shapefile and the csv file.
4. Now BROWSE the shapefile layer to see that the table data has been joined to the shapefile.
I believe you helped me with this before on an earlier version of Map. In this version, I didn't see a way to add a .txt, or .csv, or .xlsx file to the JOIN dialog box, so I didn't think it was possible. But it seems to have accepted the csv file, even though csv is not listed as one of the available filetypes.
Glad to hear that you have it working. I will keep looking for a simpler process, and if you will be doing this on a regular basis perhaps we could enhance the software to use a more direct approach. Do you use Spatial databases, such as SQL Server or PostGIS?
I do not use these databases, but I should probably learn how. If there are any Bentley resources on learning to use these with Map, please send the info my way.
The Working with Spatial Databases chapter in the Map Help document is a good place to start. The full versions of Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server can be expensive, but they offer low-cost alternatives (SQL Express). PostGIS and File Geodatabases are free.
Following up on next steps of this joining of spatial and tabular data...
After joining the data, I'm trying to export it as a shapefile. However there is some kind of problem with the feature/column names.
For example, the name of the tabular data file I joined to the shapefile is "muaggatt.csv". Each column in that csv file is named "Column1", "Column2", and so on. When joined to the spatial data, the new column names become "muaggatt.Column1", "muaggatt.Column2", and so on. When I try to export this as a shapefile, I get an error message that says "Error: Duplicate property name: muaggatt_C.
We've seen that duplicate property name issue before. The .dbf file has a limitation on the number of characters allowed, so you have to edit the properties to make them unique. Right-click on the Feature name in the Export dialog, select Show Properties > Ungrouped, and rename one of the duplicates to be unique to the 9th character.