Hello everyone,
My name is Derek, and I’m excited to be a part of this community. I joined the ‘local rural water’ team (September 2023) and was tasked with migrating their existing water infrastructure from AutoCAD to GIS. I have a background in AutoCAD but had not heard of ESRI before this position.
The company has 5,000 miles of pipeline in the ground, serving 15,845 meters, throughout 18 counties in the Midwest, USA.
I spent the first 2 months learning everything ESRI. Taking advantage of the online courses, a short course at the College Campus, and reading success stories helped me gain an understanding of what GIS had to offer. I spent the following 6 months auditing the AutoCAD system i.e. essentially tracing mains, cleaning up attributes, standardizing layers. Essentially sorting/cleaning/joining 20+yrs of AutoCAD drawings. We went from having 16 master layouts referencing 80 township maps to having the entire system, with all information, on a single map.
Using Desktop Pro, I reverse engineered the AutoCAD system. Set symbology to match the legacy maps and when needed made custom SVG symbols. That’s not to say, without one roadblock after another, as it has been a learning experience. Over the last year, I’ve gotten to know the support crew at ESRI quite well.
With that, we are currently in our second month of BETA testing Field Maps. I am in the process of tightening up the GPS collection process within Field Maps and on track to rely specifically on GIS after the New Year.
I look forward to meeting and collaborating with you all. Thank you for welcoming me into this community!
Feel free to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn.
