Linking As-Built Drawings to Road Segments and Utility Lines in ArcGIS Pro

[l_al-sabbagh]

I’m looking for the best approach to link a set of As-Built drawings to road segments and utility lines (e.g., water mains, storm mains, sanitary mains) in ArcGIS. From both an asset/document management perspective and an ease-of-tracking/updating perspective, what would be the most efficient method?

Specifically, I have the following questions:

1. Attachment Strategy – Is it better to attach all related documents to the road segment, or should each utility line have its own associated documents?

2. Version Control – Since these drawings are regularly updated, how can I ensure that only the most recent version is linked and accessible?

3. Alternative Layer Approach – Would it be possible to store all documents in a separate layer and use a join feature to associate them with road segments and utility lines dynamically?

4. Numbering and Referencing – If using a join feature, should the document numbering system align with road segment or utility IDs to ensure a reliable connection?

5. Real-World Applications – Have you encountered a similar challenge? If so, how did you solve it in your workflow?

I’d appreciate any insights or best practices from those who have worked with document management and GIS integration for infrastructure assets.

[RPGIS]

Hi @l_al-sabbagh 

Here are the things that I would recommend to help you along.

1. For sizable attachments or commonly associated attachments.
   1. If the attachments are fairly sizable, > 50MB or larger and database storage is potentially an issue, then it would be advisable to create a separate table that has those attachments with a unique ID per attachment that is updated automatically in that table.
   2. Create a relationship class with that table with any other features and assigning that ID will automatically have that attachment associated with it.
   3.  For small attachments then it can be attached to multiple features unless of course those features share identical information
2. Versioning is pretty straightforward so depending on when a version is edited then you can identify, using version management, what changes were made and when.
3. Answered by the first
4. Always use a separate IDs since the other features already have their own identification
5. We are currently looking to implement a similar solution and this is the route we are taking.

[l_al-sabbagh]

Hi @RPGIS ,

Thank you for your detailed response!

Your suggestion about using a relationship class makes a lot of sense.

I’m curious—what are your thoughts about storing the documents externally in SharePoint for example, using URLs to link them instead of attaching them directly? This might help save database storage space while still allowing easy access to the latest version of the documents.

Thanks,

[RhettZufelt]

I have an asbuilt field in each of my FC's and populate it with the document name of the As-Built drawing (PDF's of the drawings) the data came from.

Some of them are stored in SharePoint, but most are in a folder, and my IIS has a virtual directory pointing to it.  I then just encode the URL path in the popups and incorporate the asbuilt field as part of the path.

https://server.data.com/documents/RecordDrawings/{asbuilt}.pdf

This way, there is only one copy of the pdf's, and if any get updated, no need to edit anything in the FC table(s) as they still point to the same filename/path.

At first I had the entire URL encoded in a field in the FC but found it easier to just update popup configs when we change/update servers rather than attributes for all my FC's.

R_