We hope you all had a good start to the new year and wish you all the best for 2025.

In this blog post, we give you an update on the most important OCAD innovations from last year.

Feature Map – Get more out of your LiDAR Data
The Feature Map can be used to recognize objects close to the ground such as stones, walls, tree trunks, fences, or cars which were previously not or only poorly recognizable on background maps that can be created with the DEM Wizard in OCAD.

Define Paper Size
OCAD has been enhanced with the Define Paper Size function to make it easier to display a print area or create a map layout. The paper size is visible in the drawing area and the area outside is grayed out.

Apple Look Around Viewer added to OCAD
The Apple Look Around Viewer now offers itself as a real alternative to Google Street View, as it can be more up-to-date and more comprehensive depending on the area. It has therefore been added to our list of Geoviewer.

OCAD Sketch App Improvements
We have added some new features to the OCAD Sketch App: Sketch colors can now be filtered and sorted, zoom buttons can be hidden, the eraser can be resized, the sketch layer can be hidden or just dimmed and background layers can be shown or hidden all at once.

How are unsymbolized objects created?

If vector data such as Shape, GeoPackages or DXF are imported into OCAD, OCAD must know which imported objects are to be assigned to which OCAD symbols by means of a Cross Reference Table (.ocdCrt) during import.

If the translation table contains errors or gaps, the imported objects are displayed in OCAD as unsymbolized objects, i.e. the objects appear in the drawing area but are not assigned to any OCAD symbol.

What properties do unsymbolized objects have?

Unsymbolized objects are displayed by default in red color on top of the other map objects.

If an unsymbolized object is selected, the layer name is shown in the left part of the status bar.

Hide or Show unsymbolized objects by changing the Show Objects without Symbol option in the Symbol menu.

How can unsymbolized objects be converted?

Option Cross Reference Table:

You can use the Convert Imported Layers to Symbol command from the Map menu to convert unsymbolized objects to symbolized OCAD objects. In the dialog box you can create and/or modify a list of references. A reference consists of a layer (left side) and the corresponding OCAD symbol (right side). Symbol number -1 means that OCAD do not import and delete the layer.

You can save the list to a cross reference (.ocdCrt) file for later use. You can load an existing cross reference file to modify or execute it. Predefined cross reference tables by OCAD can be found in the folder C:\Program Files\OCAD\OCAD 2018 [EDITION]\Crt.

This procedure is useful if geodata is often imported.

Option Manual Assignment:

• In the drawing area, select an unsymbolized object.
• Select the corresponding OCAD symbol in the symbol box on the right side.
• Choose the icon Change Symbol for All Objects With Same Symbol (or from the Object menu) to change all objects of that layer
  or..
  Choose the icon Change Symbol (Selected Objects) (or from the Object menu) to change only the selected object.

See an animation here.

This procedure is useful when only a few unsymbolized objects are involved.