Most of our work in my office is related to facility planning for the U.S. Navy. Years ago, one of the first things we’d try and get when we started a project was General Development Maps (GDM) for the installation which were usually in CAD and usually tiled. We’d usually have to develop GIS from this CAD and it was much work anyone who’s ever had to import hundreds of CAD layers into SDSFIE can attest to. As time has gone on, more of these installations have invested in their GIS and now have some great looking datasets for us to use with our projects.
What I have noticed lately is the quality of the mapping from our clients. These “basemaps” replace the old GDM maps that were used in the past (or NIMA) and they look very professional. What is even more amazing is that they are done without any of the old tricks we had to use in the past (export to Illustrator, etc). I also think we are at the cusp of a cartography revolution with the new cartographic features of ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 (I blogged about them back at the UC). I’m looking forward to see what maps are produced using the new powerful cartography tools.
While there is a great resource for Cartographers on the web, there isn’t much on the ESRI site. Maybe if the ArcScripts gets cleaned up and organized better, we’ll be able to find more nuggets on the site. What would be really good is if there could be the equivalent to EDN for cartographers on the ESRI site. I think the trend is to have more communities out there rather than one big support site. I mean wouldn’t it be cool to see a Geoprocessing community go up, rather than the static download page that is currently up?
4 responses so far ↓
1
Brian Johnson
// Feb 23, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Your mention of the pain of SDSFIE is fresh in my mind. About this time one year ago I was introduced (”read up on this SDSFIE thing - soon!”) to SDSFIE. One year later, and two completed projects collecting GPS data at military bases and creations of many SDSFIE compliant layers - and I now I’ve know the love/hate relationship with it. Love the structured environment compared to some of the data I’ve seen in the past. Hate the itty-bitty details and metadata requirements that are such a pain to create - but I’m sure the end user of my data appreciates it.
Love to hear more of your experiences with SDSFIE - because I’ve got a few more dollars for future projects in our current contract - so I know I’ve got more fun ahead!
2
MikeD
// Feb 26, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Ahhh SDSFIE (does anyone else call it sids-fee? Probably not the one’s who get mad when I refer to ESRI as ess-ree :-))
Converting our installations data has consumed my life for a few months now, and while it has been a royal pain, the benefits of a comprehensive standard are really starting to pay off.
3 Spatially Adjusted with James Fee » Blog Archive » New Cartography Tools in ArcGIS 9.2 // Mar 3, 2006 at 2:28 pm
[...] I posted a little about the new features (well actually “alluded” to them) in the 9.2 release since we can’t blog about it, but ESRI did write an article in the latest ArcNews about what is new and how it all works. If you want to see how 9.2 revolutionizes how we’ll create maps in 9.2, check it out. It even has tons of pictures to show you just how it works. The new features give GIS professionals so much more control over their maps. This is something anyone who creates maps in ArcMap will want to keep on top of or you’ll be left behind. The power to create maps and not lose accuracy is simply amazing. One thing to keep in mind, the article doesn’t mention it but at the 05 UC, ESRI did say you’ll need an ArcInfo license to create these cartographic features and at least an ArcEditor license to edit them. ArcView cannot work with these features but can open and render them so you won’t lose them if you have to print from ArcView. [...]
4
Nina
// Oct 29, 2007 at 2:30 pm
I too have just been introduced to SDSFIE and my problem is, how do you use it to efficiently make maps in ArcMap? The way it is displayed is by the alias, which in older versions of SDSFIE were cryptic names, and all of the possible values display in the TOC…not just those that actually exist in the data layer. I might be missing something because I’m new to SDSFIE formatted data, but it’s a real pain at the moment to go through and remove all of the non-existent features and rename the layers.
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