Physical Location of Survey Projects/Data

Address of the property has worked for me for 20 years. 😉

There's some software out there that will take a table of addresses and convert them to a google kml file.

Or dump all the jobs on grid into one dwg and send to google from Carlson .

So do you file everything by address? I'm sort of at the mercy of the existing filing system here. The company I work for has been keeping track of jobs by number as they come in. It's just an ever-increasing ticker basically. I'm thinking of a secondary way to track it so I will any previous work and then I can go pull control, etc. to save time.

Database, I guess I'm Showing My Age

You can write a databse sort program or buy it commercial.

Some sort keys to the data are:

Client

Address

County/Munic./Block/Lot

Subdivision Name

Project Number

Some offices use a County/Municipal key in the project number.

I would add SPC. In PA quite a few counties have gone to orthorectified photos overlain with lot lines. Most use a P.I.N. (Parcel Identifier Number) which is the centroid of the lot. Eyeballing on an orthophoto is close enough. I do not like the numbering sequence method but it goes something like this? EENN-EENN-EENN a hodgepodge of the SPC values. Typically the first EENN defines the lower left corner of a Tax Map, the next EENN gets you the Block or sub map and the last EENN defines the lot. Because these are county specific some leading SPC numbers are dropped.

I do not recall the name of the program where I usually work because I seldom do that searching.

Paul in Pa

http://beerleg.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=107519

I posted this a while back, it describes how to do that.

> Or dump all the jobs on grid into one dwg and send to google from Carlson .

That's exactly what I've done. Open Google Earth and a very pretty mosaic of parcels appears on screen. I name the layer of each parcel in CAD with job number, so I can click on it in GE and see what job number I'm looking at. Very handy.

Thanks for the input guys! I'm going to have to put procedures in place for people to search this stuff before scheduling field crews. I'm thinking I can write something in excel. The hardest part is going to be getting people to use it!

I use Google Earth to track projects. While it's not a great database tool I upload all Grid mon ties to it along with Pins for projects. It's not fancy but it works well.

http://www.agtcad.com/products/retriever/index.html

VERY good program offering TONS of options.

We use Latitude ( http://latibiz.com/).

It does addresses, links to Google Maps, searching, time sheets, financial reports, etc

Pretty comprehensive.

Dan,

If your firm uses Arcgis package, it's possible to create geo-referenced data base using arc catalog that can be queried in a number of ways. Database may include all the info that pertains to the project (geometry of the parcel,benchmarks, monumentation, deeds, pdf's, sketches, notes, etc.
Somewhat time consuming solution, but on the long run I think it could make sense. When I was at NJIT we presented this concept at the NSPS competition and won second place.

> I use Google Earth to track projects. While it's not a great database tool

I also track my jobs in GE. My job numbers start with a 4-digit number that corresponds to client name (e.g., 0000 to 0199 incorporates clients from AA to AM), so I have 50 subfolders under my Job Location folder in GE's My Places. Clients for whom I do a lot of work get their own folder-within-a-folder. The metadata UI is kind of clunky -- for example, moving a record from one folder to another can be tedious -- but having all my job locations mapped in one place is worth the effort.

I'm thinking of going with the Google Earth plan....I think we have 1 license of ARCGIS, but I do not have access. There would need to be at least 3 people who could view this database, so I guess I would have to export my places on GE into a KMZ file to share it with them?

> I'm thinking of going with the Google Earth plan....I think we have 1 license of ARCGIS, but I do not have access. There would need to be at least 3 people who could view this database, so I guess I would have to export my places on GE into a KMZ file to share it with them?

You can export any folder or subfolder by itself, so you don't have to share all of your My Places contents. If you store the job info KMZ on a drive that all of you can access, you won't have to keep shipping the file around.

> Dan,
>
> If your firm uses Arcgis package, it's possible to create geo-referenced data base using arc catalog that can be queried in a number of ways. Database may include all the info that pertains to the project (geometry of the parcel,benchmarks, monumentation, deeds, pdf's, sketches, notes, etc.
> Somewhat time consuming solution, but on the long run I think it could make sense. When I was at NJIT we presented this concept at the NSPS competition and won second place.

We're currently building a Survey GIS using ArcGIS here; at the moment it's focused around our GPS network that is underway, but the plan is to incorporate job tracking as part of it. Just seeing the functionality for recording GPS observation sessions is awesome. The nice part about it is that the viewing of the data can be done through a web browser so you don't have to use up a license to query data.