A map of Mariupol in AutoCAD: export to DWG and DXF

A map of Mariupol in AutoCAD is needed when a drawing has to be placed in its real setting: showing surrounding buildings, streets, the shoreline and green areas around the site. The ready route is to export the area you need from OpenStreetMap straight to DWG or DXF and open the file in AutoCAD as an ordinary layered drawing. Below is the order of steps and the parameters that decide the result.

Step 1. Limit the area

Don't take the whole city if the task is local. The smaller the selected area, the lighter the file and the faster it opens:

1. A block or the surroundings of the site — for a site plan and a project underlay.
2. A district — for transport schemes, built-up area analysis, setting-out drawings.
3. The entire city — only for overview materials; such a file holds tens of thousands of primitives and is heavy to work with.

Step 2. Choose DWG or DXF

DWG is AutoCAD's native format and opens with a double click. DXF is a text interchange format read by nanoCAD, BricsCAD, KOMPAS, ZWCAD, FreeCAD and almost any CAD system. If you work in AutoCAD, take DWG; if the file goes to a colleague on another platform, DXF is safer. The difference is covered in detail in the DXF vs DWG comparison.

The export order is the same for both: select the area, choose the format, set the coordinate system and detail level, download the file.

What ends up in the drawing

Geometry arrives as closed and open polylines sorted into AutoCAD layers:

• roads and streets — driveways classified by road type;
• buildings — building footprints;
• water bodies — the river, the water area, ponds, the shoreline;
• green areas — parks, squares, tree belts;
• railways — tracks and station junctions;
• points of interest — infrastructure objects.

Layer names come out in the interface language the export was made in: with an English interface the layer manager shows Roads, with a Russian one «Дороги и улицы». Unneeded layers are easy to switch off, and the ones you need can be frozen against accidental edits.

Check how well the area is mapped

This is the main quirk of working with Mariupol. OpenStreetMap is filled in unevenly by its community: central blocks and arterial roads are usually complete, while industrial zones, outskirts and districts hit by destruction may be drawn in fragments or reflect a state from several years ago.

Worth checking before the file goes into a project:

1. Look at the area on the map before exporting — at block zoom you immediately see whether building footprints are there or whether there are blank patches.
2. Compare it with any recent imagery: if the imagery shows buildings the map does not, the buildings layer is incomplete for that patch.
3. Mind the dating — OSM shows the current state of the database, not the date of any survey; when an object was added is not visible from the map itself.

The practical conclusion: for design documentation an OSM map serves as context and an underlay, but not as a source of point coordinates and not as a replacement for a topographic survey or official cadastral records.

Step 3. The coordinate system must be metric

This is the key technical point: OpenStreetMap source data is stored in WGS84 (EPSG:4326), in degrees, so without reprojection into metres the drawing comes out a fraction of a unit across and lengths, areas, hatches and linetypes all behave strangely — the mechanics are covered in exporting OpenStreetMap to DWG for AutoCAD.

So choose a projection in metres when exporting. For Mariupol that's UTM zone 37N (EPSG:32637): coordinates become metric, and distances and areas are measured by the standard DIST and AREA commands without recalculation.

If the project runs in a local coordinate system, keep this in mind: local systems appear in the export list as Gauss-Krüger zones marked "~MSK-NN" — an approximation, not the region's official local grid, whose parameters are not published. When you need the real thing, enter your own proj4 or WKT in the custom CRS field. Either way, check the fit against a known point — a building corner or a junction whose coordinates you have from the project.

Step 4. Units, scale and insertion

1. Open the file in AutoCAD and run ZOOM E — you'll see the whole exported area.
2. Check the units: the UNITS command, type "Decimal", drawing unit — metre. With a metric projection one drawing unit equals one metre on the ground.
3. Measure a control distance with DIST against a known object — that immediately tells you whether the georeferencing is right.
4. If the map is meant as a background under your own drawing, attach it as an external reference (XREF) with insertion point 0,0 and scale 1: an underlay is easy to toggle and dim without touching the main drawing. Details are in the OSM underlay in DWG guide.

For approvals and printing alongside the drawing, a PDF of the same area is useful — it opens without CAD for any recipient.

Easier — get a ready file straight away

There's no need to install QGIS, wrestle with plugins and convert shapefiles by hand. Select the part of Mariupol you need on the osm2cdr.ru map, choose DWG or DXF, set a projection in metres — and get a layered drawing ready to drop into the project. It's free and takes seconds.

Maps of other cities follow the same route — for example, a map of Minsk in various formats.

In short

• Take the minimum sufficient area: a block or district rather than the whole city.
• DWG for AutoCAD, DXF for other CAD systems.
• The drawing has separate layers: roads, buildings, water, greenery, railways, points of interest; layer names follow the export's interface language.
• Always choose a metric projection (UTM 37N for Mariupol), otherwise sizes will be in degrees; "~MSK-NN" zones are an approximation, so check against a known point.
• Before you work, look at how well the area is mapped in OpenStreetMap: the data is context and an underlay, not a replacement for a topographic survey.