Plex-Earth Lite is completely free and available in the Autodesk App Store. Full versions (Basic, Pro, Premium) are available for paid subscriptions with additional features like permanent image storage and high-resolution exports.
If you only have standard vanilla AutoCAD and need a quick visual mockup, you can manually screenshot Google Maps and scale it precisely using a known distance. Step-by-Step Workflow
How to Convert Google Maps to AutoCAD (Verified Methods) Bringing Google Maps data into AutoCAD is a common requirement for civil engineers, urban planners, and architects. While AutoCAD does not have a single "magic button" to directly import Google Maps files with perfect vector geometry, several verified workflows exist to achieve this.
: Use the GEOGRAPHICLOCATION command inside AutoCAD to set your coordinate system. convert google maps to autocad verified
However, you are from:
Skip manual survey drafting for preliminary stages.
As Plex-Earth themselves acknowledge, copy/paste from Google Earth "shouldn't be treated as your final, authoritative dataset". It's a shortcut for early-stage work, not a replacement for surveyed data. Plex-Earth Lite is completely free and available in
What is the specific or country of your project site?
Accuracy is the single most critical factor, and the main challenge is .
Go to a free online GIS converter like or CadRaster . Upload your .osm file. Choose DXF or DWG as the output format. Step-by-Step Workflow How to Convert Google Maps to
Choose the local coordinate system matching your survey data (e.g., NAD83 State Plane) and select your time zone.
: Use a verified coordinate conversion tool like ExpertGPS or a free geospatial engine like QGIS. Open the .kml file and export it as an AutoCAD .dxf or .dwg file.
: Identify a known physical point (like a building corner) in both Google Earth and your AutoCAD drawing. Use the ID command in CAD to verify the coordinates match the latitude/longitude or projected coordinates from the source.
To verify your drawing is true-to-scale inside AutoCAD, always perform a baseline check: