MAP2PDF, developed by Layton Graphics, takes map publishing and distribution to a whole new level. MAP2PDF is simple, it takes your proprietary GIS data formats and publishes them to intelligent geo-referenced non-proprietary PDF files. The PDF files can then be viewed and queried using Adobe Reader and viewed, queried and red lined using Adobe Acrobat.

MAP2PDF makes GIS map referencing a simple task for your entire company. Using Adobe software, the PDF file can be accessed through a laptop, desktop, hand-held computer or internet. This solution has revolutionized telecommunication and utility companies worldwide.

With 9,000 miles of pipeline across north and central Alabama and more than that many maps to maintain and distribute, the Operations Services division of Alabama Gas Corporation, Alabama's largest natural gas distributor, had good reason to want a more efficient way to provide access to its maps. Finding a map was a major undertaking for a technician in the field; Birmingham alone had three boxes of aperture cards to be waded through in order to find the image of just one map. And if the three boxes of cards in the back of a technician's truck should get out of order? Forget about it. More often than not,
the technician would simply call the engineering department, rather than hunt through the hundreds or even thousands of aperture cards. Even then, the engineer would have to make a physical copy of the map before he could help the technician, a process that could take
as long as half an hour.

Not only was this system time consuming for the users, it was also difficult for the Operations Services division to maintain. Distributing updates of either paper maps or aperture cards was time consuming and labor intensive. In search of a solution, Pipeline Services manager Jeff Elliott looked at distributing the maps on CD, but quickly ran into
problems. Because the maps were stored in individual AutoCAD files, there was no easy way for a nonengineer to determine which file contained the needed data. Elliott also needed a simple viewer that would minimize the training and support costs of the system, as well
as a way to encrypt the data to prevent unauthorized use.

Around this time, Elliot was approached by Layton Graphics, Inc., a document management company in Marietta, GA, that had been providing Alagasco with aperture card system services for over a decade. LGI proposed a solution based on its MAP2PDF product,
which would involve converting the AutoCAD files to geo-referenced Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. This system would allow users to find maps in several ways – by customer street address, street intersections, or by simply zooming in from an overall
map of Alabama. The maps could be made available to everyone in the organization, including field maintenance. To test the idea, LGI and Alagasco agreed to a pilot study involving Alagasco's Anniston Divison. With the successful completion of the pilot in January of 2002, LGI went on to do a complete conversion of all of Alagasco's 9,000
maps to PDF.

To help in finding the right detail map, LGI created keymaps of all of Alagasco's divisions, using the free Tiger landbase from the US Census Bureau. These maps, containing street address data, were text searchable by street name, and were hyperlinked to Alagasco's
quarter-township index maps. These index maps contained hyper-links to all the detail maps, which contained further hyper-links to sub-detail maps, creating a searchable, threetiered system of increasingly detailed maps. Users could start with a map of the state of
Alabama and work their way down to a sub-detail of an area of just several hundred feet. Or, if the address location was known, the user could zoom to the area of the map containing that particular address.

All of this could be viewed with LGI's MAP2PDF product, which uses Adobe Acrobat Reader to display the maps as PDF documents. Since Acrobat Reader is a freely available, crossplatform application, training and support were minimal. All an Alagasco employee needed to view any of the company's maps was a computer and a copy of Acrobat Reader. The use of Adobe solved the security problem Elliott had initially encountered. Each PDF file was password-protected, limiting access to Alagasco users.

"This was an answer to a prayer," Elliott said. "With no staff and virtually strapped to get map updates back to the division, we saw MAP2PDF as an answer. The mapping CD came and hit us and we thought, 'Hey, this is great.' Now we have a complete accountability, a complete audit trail of each map."

MAP2PDF is now in the hands of upwards of 100 Alagasco employees. One such employee is Doug Honeycutt, Project Manager of System Maintenance Services. Honeycutt deals with cast iron replacement efforts in the Birmingham division, and uses MAP2PDF almost
daily. From his desktop, Honeycutt can pull up any map he needs in a matter of seconds. In the past, he had to find and pull the paper map, a process far more time consuming. "You just cannot have too much information if you're in the field," Honeycutt said.

MAP2PDF is also streamlining things for field technicians, as well. When a technician needs information from a particular map, but doesn't have time to hunt through the aperture cards himself, or can't find the one he's looking for among the thousands of cards, he calls the
engineering department to have them find and consult the map. Past efforts, which might take as long as half an hour, now take only minutes for an engineer to call up a map from his desktop.

And now some technicians no longer have to deal with aperture cards or phone calls at all. Alagasco provided its line location contractors with sixteen laptops, all running MAP2PDF. The result was more self-sufficient line locators and fewer hassles for everyone. Because of Adobe Reader's simple design, the program is easy to learn. "It's a very straightforward program," Randy Patterson said. "It's intuitive. If you're familiar with Adobe, there should be no problem at all. It's simple enough that you can teach yourself." Patterson hopes to expand MAP2PDF's uses in the future. "All you need is a technician
who's as comfortable with a computer as he is with a wrench, and this could replace aperature cards in the field," he said. "The goal in the long term is to make more information available as close to where the rubber hits the road as possible."

About Layton Graphics, Inc.

Founded in 1976, Layton Graphics, Inc. specializes in publishing mapping and engineering data from CAD, GIS databases, manual drawings and other This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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