I like reading his posts about Civil 3D because although I am proficient with Map 3D, I have yet to jump into Civil 3D. So his posts are helping me better understand the commitment and effort required to learn that software. And the articles share the benefits he is finding from using the software. 

Another GIS Day

Today ended up being another day primarily spent on GIS. I successfully was able to start a web service for some of our data. But when I went into the ArcGIS Silverlight Viewer Map Builder and put my URL into that data, it could not connect. I tried to look through the documentation to figure out why it isn't connecting, but could find nothing wrong. Our other GIS person is going to look it over too. If we both can't figure it out, I guess we'll try asking the person in our neighboring community for some help. Or maybe we'll end up calling ESRI support.  

We also worked on populating data and planning the organization of data in a few of our feature classes. This has been an ongoing task for us as we move through each type of data collected and managed by the city. Eventually I want to capture it all in a data catalog so we have a better idea of just what we have an how it is organized and who maintains it. But that's a huge project that we only have time to work on every now and then.

Grant Meeting

Today we also met to discuss a grant that was awarded to our city by the state. We needed to look through the forms that must be filled out, and we wanted to further discuss the project related to the grant. I contacted the grant administrator to get more information before we get too far into filling out everything that we must submit. But I did not yet hear back so hopefully will tomorrow so we can get going on submitting the information.

Storm Sewer Project

Our interns are still working on the CAD drawing for the small storm sewer project they are designing. It's been great experience for them to take a project from the start to finish. They have done all the field work, communication with the residents who will be impacted, the design, and the drawing of the plan. Eventually, I will have them figure out some quantities even though we will probably build this in-house.

Manhole Frame Demo

We also sat through a demo of a new type of frame and adustment system for manholes. This company was out of Canada, and their product is made entirely of rubber. Of course, being a conservative engineer, I am always skeptical at first with new products. Sometimes I find something new that does look worth trying. But in this case, I was mainly turned off by the cost. Purchasing the frame and adjusting rings was almost the same cost as buying a whole new manhole structure with the metal frame and concrete adjusting rings like the one shown in this photo. So it would be hard to justify. Plus it looked like the installation could be time-consuming which might make the total construction cost even more. It's still good to evaluate new products just to make sure we are making the best use of our funds.

As an example of what can be done with Unity3D, I show below a crude example of importing DEM files into Unity3D. While the process is fairly easy, I still have some issues with the elevations looking too exaggerated, and there is an area that does not have contours. I also need to figure out how to apply the aerial images to the ground. So I still have a lot of work to do to refine this, but I thought it was pretty cool to be able to import contours and see the flat land transform immediately to reflect the topology of my city. I put some water in the model to indicate the river which helps to highlight the dam and islands. But I have yet to add any buildings, trees, or other features.

 Fox River Valley in Geneva, Ill.

Another cool aspect of Unity3D is it can be embedded in a browser. Below is the static representation of what I created showing a view looking north through the river valley. Eventually I can add the capability for someone to travel through this model of my city with an avatar.

Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

Through it all I gained a good, first-hand knowledge of the challenges faced by each community undertaking this journey. So for some time I have wanted to share with you some down-to-earth insights and ideas. If you are an experienced GIS user, I would be very interested in hearing how your ideas or experience compares to mine and in having you share your insights. And if you are just beginning, I hope this helps to encourage you to begin and offers some basic guidance.

A Little GIS History
Even though GIS has been around for decades in one form or another, there still seems to be a general misunderstanding and an awkward handling of this technology. In government and in particular in the engineering field GIS seemed to creep up onto unsuspecting drafting personnel. Just as they were getting used to making the transition from drawing with pen and paper to CAD, this new beast called GIS emerged.

Moving to CAD had really only required the need to learn a new set of tools. And while this did have somewhat of a learning curve, at least the process and product was familiar. The information brought in by the survey crew remained the same: points, elevations, etc. The drawing format remained the same using the typical plan and profile format. Even maps were produced in the same style and format.

GIS on the other hand at first seemed to be from the realm of the planning department with initial uses focusing on zoning, corporate boundaries, land use, and parcel information. Perhaps this is why in many agencies GIS emerged from planning and has even remained under this department’s oversight.

So even though mapping seemed to always be grounded firmly in engineering, staff in some engineering departments did not initially embrace this new method of cranking out maps. A general lack of knowledge and awareness about GIS coupled with the need to learn yet another tool and the added challenge of changing an approach to how information is collected, presented, and maintained created too big of a leap.

However some engineering departments successfully made this transition because they realized early on the benefit of using this technology instead of CAD to represent utility information for water, sewer, electric, etc. And by now most engineering departments share this approach. But, the distinct difference in the drawing styles, delivery, and philosophy behind CAD and GIS remains, and this is where I believe the awkward handling of GIS in an organization begins.

This confusion and misunderstanding affects where GIS is located within an organization. While the engineering department has traditionally been the government office charged with map production, a quick survey of where GIS hangs its hat in each agency will reveal a variety of locations including engineering, planning, community development, IT, emergency response, police, fire, and even in a department completely on its own.

Another aspect of all this is the wide variety of GIS implementation between agencies across the U.S. Some are GIS rich with a wide range of data all geo-referenced, verified, and available to the public while others are GIS poor with little to even no GIS data available, collected, or offered. And there are many that would fit anywhere in between these two extremes.

Why is this important to all of us? The awkward organization of GIS within an agency and the wide disparity of implementation? Because the world is fast moving beyond CAD and GIS into the next phase of information management. Those who haven’t figured GIS out or even worse, those who haven’t even begun are going to fall further behind. This difference in knowledge handling can be compared to one community having all dirt roads and another having interstate highways. And just as road conditions can affect growth and economic development so can the state of a community’s knowledge base.

Look for the next in this series: Starting to Build a Local Government GIS

Pam Broviak's Avatar - Banned for being non-real

Because I already have blogged about “avatar discrimination” here, I will not go into all that again. But each time this happens, I cannot help but wonder why the network administrator makes this decision. Are they so superficial that they need to actually see what someone looks like in order to adequately judge if someone is worthy of being admitted into their special group. They certainly cannot think I am nonhuman – I post blogs, upload photos, comment on other’s posts, respond to messages. Maybe they hate the way my avatar looks. All of these thoughts go through my mind, and then I realize if someone can only accept my contributions if they can see what I look like, then I probably don’t want to be part of that group anyway. It is kind of like what happens in high school, but I never thought 28 years after graduation, I would still be dealing with that mentality.

Maybe next time, I will just upload a photo of my crazy Aunt Sophie – God rest her soul. Would network administrators prefer this because it is real?

My Aunt Sophie (now deceased).

Frankly I am surprised that this issue wasn’t front and center for the developers when they created the software. They obviously set up building tools allowing for a fairly precise coordinate system – how could they not have thought someone would want to import or export 3-D drawings and objects?

I listened to the comments made by Mitch Kapor at the closing session of the 5th birthday party for Second Life and came away with the idea that Linden Lab supports everyone’s efforts to present Second Life as a choice for delivering serious business solutions. Those of us already in Second Life are excited about using the software in this manner because we see the potential – we want to tell the world about it and look forward to the day the design community becomes fully immersed in this new virtual world. But we also realize the tools need a little more work for this to happen because our industry has such a conservative approach to adopting new technology.

So it’s up to us – use your vote to tell Mitch and the crew at Linden Lab that our industry needs this tool if they want us to be successful in promoting Second Life as a serious business application for planning, design, and construction. VOTE!

An added benefit for going through the hunt is the chance to win a prize in real life. All avatars correctly answering all six questions will be entered into a drawing for a real life prize. To participate, register for a Second Life account, go through a quick orientation, and then use the search tab in Second Life to search for “Siemens Innovation Connection.” Hit the teleport button and you will be transported to the island where you can begin your hunt. For those of you who are already members of Second Life you can get a slurl here: Siemens Innovation Connection

By attending in Second Life, I was able to find out the following information presented by Bruce Boes, global vice president, Velocity Series Marketing:

The presentation was fun and energetic and really nothing like I would have expected or had ever seen before having worked in the engineering field for the last 25 years or so. Lets face it, engineers aren’t usually thought of as the life of the party. But Siemens PLM Software showed me that maybe things are changing a little in our field. Throughout the presentation, a guy who introduced himself as the “answer man” would jump onto the stage to offer his own take on what was going on. The distraction provided a unique method of introducing key points.

A photo of the Answer Man who kept interrupting the Siemens PLM Software Velocity Launch Event in Boston.

Several videos were shown to demonstrate the ease with which products can be designed with the software in the Velocity series. I have to admit that I primarily use CAD for mapping and producing civil engineering plans which are quite a bit different from mechanical drawings. But even I could appreciate the ease with which products could be designed and then changed on the fly.

Some benefits included the ability to create specific constraints in the drawing such as holding a particular dimension, and then making changes to the product without having to worry about going back and checking or updating each constraint. During the editing process, the software revised everything on the fly as specified. You can even tell the software to always make sure a particular hole or component is always located in the center of another part – thus specifying a constraint based on a formula. That seemed impressive to me. I wish I could do that in my CAD software with my roadway or sewer design as easily as this was done in the Siemens PLM Software.

So in answer to why this type of drawing manipulation – termed “synchronous technology” is useful, Boes said it will allow the engineer the freedom to be an engineer and not have to be fully proficient in CAD. And this is good – if engineers can actually start creating the product drawing while they are designing, a significant decrease in time and elimination of mistakes can be realized. And this is what company’s are experiencing. Boes went through several design process examples to show how much time and money can be saved.

Anyway the grand finale was a man who got on stage and put himself inside a balloon. Now there’s something you don’t get to see everyday. And that part happened at the real life event!

Lately I have been working on a design project in Second Life that got me wondering how I could use the end result in my real life work on a construction site without having to go into Second Life. I kept thinking that if I build a detailed model of something simple like a manhole showing all the pipe connections, it would be helpful to be able to capture that "scene" by establishing a given area around the site. And I mean in a way that is not just a "photo" like I can already do. What I want is the ability to capture it in a way that I can view it on a special "viewer" that allows me to pan, zoom, tilt, the exported 3D scene as if I was in SL. I don't need my avatar there – I just want the ability to view it in the same manner as I would in SL.

I realize that there are many who might suggest that regular CAD products could do this, but first, I think SL is best for building simple, yet dimensionally correct, 3D models in a fast and efficient manner; second, I want to be able to have the model placed in a realistic "scene" which is not easily created in a CAD program; and third, I need a construction worker to access this on the jobsite.

That is why I am convinced that SL is the best medium to create the scene – I just need a type of generic file format that the scene could be exported as and then viewed with a viewing software made just for this purpose. Then I could give the file to the contractor, and he could, at each manhole installation, easily access that file on his phone (which soon will evolve to allow this type of viewing) to verify that the installation is taking place as designed. To do this he would not need to have any knowledge of CAD.

Those of us in civil-related construction know that the plans are rarely consulted on the job. Sometimes the contractor does not even have them handy; yet he always has his cell phone. I want my 3D manhole detail on that phone!