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Great River Energy/United Services Group

United Services Group developed an application for electric utilities to assist them with the design of electric distribution lines, "Line Design Pro." A product the industry refers to as a ¡§Staking Sheet Program,¡¨ and is intended to be used in the field. This staking sheet program, and additional GIS tools were developed primarily for electric cooperatives and municipals. These tools are designed to enhance our customers GIS systems and are designed data model independent.

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Business Problem

Our customers were looking for a full-featured staking sheet program at a reasonable cost that would feed their GIS systems. USG researched the market and found there were several field design packages but none that met the entire requirements of our customers. Existing applications are quite expensive. Along with the staking sheet program, we also had many requests for small custom applications that would enhance ArcGIS to solve a variety of issues.
Some of the problems addressed include:
„« The ability to create and store custom queries in an ArcMap project.
„« Data model independent facilities placement routines.
„« Trace down stream and generate a report containing a count of customer by phase and show the connective KVA per phase for load balancing.
„« Trace down stream and allow the user to change phase on single phase lines.
„« Map book plotting, and Imports and Export to external programs.

These tools do not alter the ESRI¡¦s core product in fact most of the applications are simply process improvements that combine 4 to 6 mouse clicks into 1, or store snapping and selectable layer settings in an ArcMap project. USG firmly believes that ESRI¡¦s core software fits all or most of our clients needs and by they can increase productivity by add small low cost extensions designed for industry specific tasks.

Technology Implemented

USG uses a variety of ESRI technology to provide these applications to our customers. The Field staking application (Line Design Pro) was developed using ESRI¡¦s ArcPad and Map Objects technology. There are 2 parts to Line Design Pro the field portable piece was developed using the ArcPad developers kit and the Desktop piece used for checking in and out projects and reviewing and printing staking sheets was built using ESRI¡¦s MapObjects. The GIS tools were developed in VB using ArcObjects and are designed to be extensions to ArcMap and are data model independent. They can be purchased separately or as a bundle.

Development Team Biography

Richard Isle Leader of Software Development: Project Manager
Tammara King Programming Specialist: Sr. developer of Line Design Pro
Jennifer Mahrer Programming Assistant: developer of Line Design Pro and the GIS tools
Joseph Griffits Programming Assistant: developer of Line Design Pro and the GIS tools
Jeffrey Grussing Leader of GIS Development: Tech support
Andy Schmidt GIS Tech 2: Tech support
Peggy Carlson GIS Tech 1: Tech support
John Auel GIS Tech 1: Tech support
Joe Buttwieler GIS Tech 1: Tech support
Robert Borchert GIS Tech 1: Tech support
Eric Potvin GIS Tech 1: Tech support

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