How To Use Google Earth In Autocad Upd May 2026

I didn’t have time for a new survey. But I had Google Earth and AutoCAD.

I traced the gravel road over the aligned image using a polyline. I drew the shed’s foundation 12 feet from the road and 30 feet south of the largest pine tree. Because the underlying map was real-world coordinates, I could even extract elevation points from Google Earth’s terrain (by exporting a contour KML and importing it as 3D polylines). how to use google earth in autocad

In seconds, AutoCAD placed a of the exact area. A little red pin showed north, and the drawing units automatically adjusted to real-world coordinates (usually UTM or Lat/Long). I didn’t have time for a new survey

I opened Google Earth Pro (the free desktop version) and navigated to the client’s property. I made sure the layer was on and tilted the view to see the topography around the trees. Then I went to View → Reset → Tilt and Compass to get a pure top-down view. I drew the shed’s foundation 12 feet from

I went back to Google Earth, captured a fresh top-down screenshot (without any added polygons), and saved it as a JPG. Back in AutoCAD, I used the command and placed that JPG.