The Road from CAD to enterprise
Douglas L. Laslo
PE Autodesk, Inc 111 McInnins Pkwy San Rafael, CA 94952
Lou Ball
Equitable Resources 200 Allegheny Center Mall
Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5352
Abstract
Utility companies are facing many pressures. These pressures are driving the need for integrated
information systems for utility operations activities. Enterprise GIS provides benefits beyond
CAD based solutions. Many utilities are beginning to make the journey from CAD based
mapping to enterprise GIS. This road, as it can be traveled today will be outlined.
Introduction
Numerous companies throughout the utility and communications industries have adopted CAD
based tools for drafting and design activities, as well as for mapping of their infrastructure and
network model. These CAD based tools have provided real benefits for the utilities in the form
of productivity improvements in drafting of new installations of infrastructure, and in the general
maintenance of the maps and records.
As the utility industry evolves, utility companies are facing many new pressures. There is an
overall need to further improve operation efficiencies and generally reduce operating costs.
Also, the regulatory environment is enforcing improvements in the management of outages and
interruptions of service as well as preventative safety measures. These pressures are driving the
need for more integrated information systems for operations activities. The CAD based tools
used for drafting and mapping can be extended to function and participate with the information
systems requirements, but have some limitations. Many utilities are looking to migrate from
their CAD based tools to a more enterprise solution approach for their mapping and network
modeling requirements.
Enterprise GIS can provide benefits beyond CAD based solutions. In enterprise GIS solutions,
the information pertaining to the utilities infrastructure, including the map related or
geographical components, is managed together in relational database tables. This makes
integration with other utility operation systems much more of a reality, and also makes
management and maintenance of the information, as well as sharing of the information much
simpler. For instance, integration of the drafting and design process with the materials and
accounting systems can streamline the process of designing and estimating new installations of
infrastructure. In addition, sharing of the connected electric, gas, communications, or
water/waste water network from relational database tables with both outage and analysis
solutions is simplified.
With the technology available today, it is possible for utilities to maintain the benefits of the
CAD based user interface, while also capturing and managing the information in enterprise GIS
solutions. This is significant since it means that the investments in existing user interface
functionality as well as user training and general acceptance is not lost as the utility expands the
capabilities.
Many utilities are beginning to make the journey down the road from CAD based mapping to
enterprise GIS. As these utilities make the journey lessons are learned and the pathway is
improved. In this paper, the experiences and approaches, as well as the technology improvements
and enhancements will be reviewed.
CAD VS Enterprise
What are the differences between CAD and enterprise? What is meant by enterprise? Why go
there? This can be confusing since there are many different levels of CAD implementations and
various levels of applications built around those implementations.
CAD is not a bad thing! CAD based GIS solutions are at least in part what started the revolution
of Automated Mapping and AM/FM (Automated Mapping and Facilities Management), the
predecessors to GIS. The concept of digitizing the manually drawn maps and then connecting
them with data files that were related to the graphic features, is a definite and significant
improvement from manual maps and records.
Depending on the extent that each organization has customized and developed applications
pertaining to their CAD based solution, moving to enterprise is not always a major step. For
those who have organized the data in the CAD files, built the relationships between graphic
features and data tables, and developed custom applications that manage and leverage the
organization, the benefits of an enterprise solution are less evident. Those solutions are to a
certain extent, enterprise solutions.
Enterprise implies bigger picture. It implies a solution that fits into the information systems
infrastructure of the organization. Open systems, availability of data to the larger group, the
ability to integrate with other corporate systems, robust multi-user scalability, and seamless
database are all characteristics of an enterprise solution.
Reasons to go
There are many benefits to moving from a CAD based GIS to an Enterprise GIS Solution. Some
of the benefits are tangible in the form of real cost savings, and some are intangible in the form
of better corporate information and improved decision process. Also, a GIS solution with
enterprise characteristics generally is easier to integrate into the organizations IT infrastructure.
Utilities desiring enterprise GIS are typically looking for the increased benefits that can be
gained by better integration of both applications and data.
In addition, utilities and other organization with larger scale infrastructure mapping and
management requirements, tend to have large numbers of CAD files to cover the extents of their
geographic area. Enterprise solutions typically run from a single database that can house
extremely large areas of the company’s territory. This concept is referred to as seamless. A user
can interact with the GIS over any size geographic area, and the data and information is
seamless, or without boundary, across the entire expanse. An enterprise solution eliminates the
issue of management of data across multiple files and file boundaries. Management of these
larger numbers of files becomes an issue from several perspectives.
First, a key map or other reference capabilities must be kept so that users can navigate to, and
interact with the correct file relative to the feature (pole, pipe, switch, or valve), or perhaps street
intersection they are interested in working with. Custom applications can be developed that
perform some of this navigation for the user, and some CAD based GIS solutions include tools to
assist the users or tools to assist the developers to build such capabilities. However, these are
generally custom one-off applications that ultimately require application maintenance. In
enterprise solutions, navigation is simply an act of querying the database for the entity, street or
address, or any other feature contained in the database tables. The system returns the feature
centered in the screen including the relative surrounding geography without the user needing to
understand where in the organization’s territory the feature is located.
Also, when users are distributed throughout multiple work locations, distribution of the data they
are interested in working with, or worse, entire copies of all data within the organization
becomes a network traffic and system performance issue. Interaction with a single copy of a
single data source regardless of work location, is much less cumbersome on the network
bandwidth. Additionally, enterprise solutions typically have graphic caching and transaction
management schemes to assist the distributed user location scenarios.
From the data management perspective, updates across all features of a specific feature type, is
greatly simplified in an enterprise solution where all features are in a single database. Updates
across a particular feature type can be performed in minutes with simple SQL database updates.
Performing an update to a specific feature type when the data is located in multiple files is very
cumbersome. In this case a routine may be required that opens each file, performs the update,
and resaves each file when complete. Worse, a manual process might be required.
For the utility industry, the improvement in business operations with an enterprise solution are
significant. First, utilities are concerned with the concept of connected networks. Management
of connected networks across multiple files requires special treatment and often customized
applications so that the network can be considered as a complete group of features regardless of
what files the segments are included in.
In the electric utility industry, connected networks are managed and operated in the GIS, and
those networks may also be passed to outage solutions and load analysis solutions. This is true
also for the gas industry. Flow analysis routines, pipeline safety routines and pipeline integrity
management routines are better performed in a solution where boundaries do not have to be
considered. Regulatory pressures in both of these industries have pushed the utilities to have
better information so that the safety and outage routines provide better and more up to date
information.
In both the electric and gas industries there are also requirements around equipment and facilities
inspections. When data is spread across multiple files, gathering information on inspection
history and current inspection requirements is very cumbersome. Inspection management
compliance is greatly simplified when all data is included in a single seamless database.
The communications industry faces many of the same concerns and issues as the utility industry.
Communication companies are driven by the competitive nature of the industry to have
streamlined capabilities, and the availability of better information for service issues and problem
solving. Better information generally means information that is more accessible. Management
of the information within a seamless enterprise solution improves their capabilities over storage
of the data across multiple files.
