As a public works professional, one of the best things you can do in the new year is to check out ArcGIS Pro – a GIS mapping software by ESRI. I admit, like many GIS software products, ArcGIS Pro can be a little overwhelming to use right out of the box. Even though I am…
Category: GIS
3D Printing for Civil Engineers
Lately I've been thinking our field might be missing out by not exploring the opportunities offered by 3D printing. Even though 3D printers have been around for many years, I haven't seen anything significant related to its use by agencies or firms in our field. I remember a 3D printer in use in a classroom at the college…
Augview – a Window to Your Underground Assets
Augview, founded by Michael Bundock in 2012 in New Zealand, is the first commercial, mobile application I have seen offered to the public works industry allowing utilities to geospatially capture, store, and display underground utilities in 3D through the use of a tablet or other mobile device. The software, through the use of GIS, will…
WATERCON2014
This year I am fortunate to again have the opportunity to attend WATERCON in Springfield, Ill.It's amazing how every year the conference offers so many great sessions, and the exhibitors always have such interesting displays and information. In addition to attending sessions and talking with vendors, I'll be posting as much as I can on several…
Using Google Street View for Engineering Submittals
Many people are probably familiar with Google Maps. This online tool offered by Google allows you to see an aerial view of a specific area and get directions and travel times from one address to another. Some might also take advantage of Google's "street view" which allows you to see a location as if you were standing there…
Publishing GIS Data to a Google Map Using Fusion Tables
At work we've been focusing a lot on development of web maps. We have an ESRI ArcGIS Server so we've been trying out the JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight options available. But we've also been exploring the mapping/GIS opportunities offered by Google. This week, I needed to create an embeddable map that I could easily generate…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 70
Day 70 GIS Group Meeting Today started out amazing then in the afternoon went to total frustration. I had to leave very early this morning to meet a co-worker for a GIS meeting of IMAUG – Illinois Municipal Arc Users Group. If you are into GIS, this is a great group to get involved with….
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 48
Day 48 Although we did not have today off, many others in the community did including the schools. So I think quite a few people at work took the day off so it seemed a little more quiet than normal at work. I started out going through emails and preparing for several meetings I had…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 47
Day 47 As I had mentioned yesterday I took a vacation day on Thursday so I could attend the student-parent day at my daughter's middle school. But back at work today! And after today, I'm ready to say lock me in a dark, lonely room and hang a sign on the door with a big…
A Day in the Life of a Civil Engineer – Day 26
Day 26 Coding payouts I started the day going through some emails. Then the other engineers and I went over some recent pay requests and the budget line items to make sure we were coding everything correctly. We wanted to do this because our finance department has gone though and organized our funds into a…