FAQ

This is one of those “slightly known” features that I wish more people knew about!

IntelliCAD can put a live online map from Microsoft Bing, Microsoft Azure or Esri right behind your linework. Then you can capture a piece of that map as an image to keep in the drawing. It takes three steps and you don’t need any add-ons.

As of October 8, 2026, the current release is IntelliCAD 15.0 (released August 4, 2026). Everything below comes from the official IntelliCAD release notes for 15.0 and earlier versions.

One quick heads-up: IntelliCAD is the engine that many companies build their own CAD programs on. So the features, menus and ribbon tabs you actually see depend on your IntelliCAD-based product and edition. If something below doesn’t show up in yours, check with the IntelliCAD-based product’s vendor.

Jump to:

• Step 1: Give your drawing a geographic location
• Step 2: Turn on the online map
• Step 3: Capture an image for offline work
• Attaching your own georeferenced images
• Other mapping tools worth knowing about

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Step 1: Give your drawing a geographic location

The map has to know where your drawing sits on the planet. You can set the location from:

• A .kml or .kmz file
• Latitude and longitude – a dialog box then shows the coordinate systems that make sense for that location (IntelliCAD 11.0 and newer).
• Your current location
• An address lookup (IntelliCAD 13.0 and newer)

You can also specify the base point and north rotation when you set the location. Once your drawing has a location, the status bar can display geographic coordinates.

Step 2: Turn on the online map

Bing Maps was the original map service, with road, aerial or hybrid map types. IntelliCAD has added more choices since then:

• Esri imagery – added in IntelliCAD 14.0.
• Microsoft Azure Maps – added in IntelliCAD 14.1, with several map types.
• GEOMICROSOFTSERVICE – type this at the command line to switch between the Bing and Azure services (IntelliCAD 14.1 and newer).
• Mark Position – adds position markers to the map.

IntelliCAD 11.1 sped up the display of large geographic images and 14.1 gave map rendering a noticeable boost, so big maps are much easier to live with.

Step 3: Capture an image for offline work

A live map is great, but it needs the Internet. So when you’re happy with the view:

• Capture Area – captures an area of the online map as an image you can keep working with offline.
• Reload Image – reloads the map image.
• Map Service – turns geographic map services on or off. When it’s off, IntelliCAD can’t reach the Internet to display the online map and the Mark Position, Capture Area and Reload Image commands aren’t available.

That Map Service switch is handy if your IT folks get nervous about CAD programs talking to the Internet!

Attaching your own georeferenced images

Have an aerial or a scanned map from somewhere else? You can attach it the old-fashioned way:

• IMAGEATTACH – attaches raster images and can use an image positioning file, such as a .tfw world file, to place and scale the image.
• MrSID images – IntelliCAD attaches .sid and MrSID MG4 compressed images and reads the world file data embedded in MrSID files.
• IMAGECLIP – clips an image, and you can select an existing polyline as the clipping boundary.

Other mapping tools worth knowing about

• Map Import – imports map data as CAD entities from Esri shapefiles (.shp), .sdf files and .sqlite files, or by connecting to PostgreSQL, MySQL and WFS servers. Polygons can come in as closed polylines and you can pick the coordinate system as you import.
• Geospatial PDFs – IntelliCAD 14.1 and newer can export and print geospatial PDFs. Turn on the Include geospatial information option and anyone with a supported PDF viewer can see live coordinates and take measurements as they pan and zoom.

Not sure which IntelliCAD version your product runs on? Ask the IntelliCAD-based product’s vendor. Since Esri arrived in 14.0 and Azure in 14.1, the version tells you which map services you’ll see.