New Online Resource: GIS Skills for Engineers

Over the last several months, I have had the pleasure of facilitating a number of seminars in Canada and the United States aimed at demonstrating the six crucial GIS skills needed by Engineering and CAD professionals. I have blogged about this seminar series in the past. This time I want to call your attention to a great resource entitled GIS Skills for Engineers that is now available via the web. This resource is part of Autodesk's help documentation for AutoCAD Map 3D and highlights a number of important GIS skills including:

Data Preparation
Data Conversion
Data Access
Data Editing
Data Management
Styling and Theming Features
Analysis
Sharing Data with Others
Map Layout and Cartography
Printing, Plotting, and Publishing

The best part of GIS Skills for Engineers is the accompanying animations which demonstrate the skills in action. For example, if you wanted to know how to perform a polygon overlay analysis to determine which parcels in a city fall within zones classified as “Retail”, check out this animation.

Free Engineering GIS Software for Unemployed

Autodesk, Inc recently announced a new program called the Autodesk Assistance Program. According to Steve Blum, Senior Vice President America's Sales for Autodesk, the program is designed to help the unemployed advance their career during this challenging job market.

Among other things, the program offers:

• Free software
• Free online training

One of the software packages offered by Autodesk through this program is AutoCAD Civil 3D.

Recall that in some of my previous posts, I discussed the need for Engineering GIS. Well, built on top of AutoCAD Map 3D and AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D is a true engineering GIS platform and complies with all five Engineering GIS requirements, namely:

• Data throughout the lifecycle
• Native data access
• Engineering design tools
• Geospatial tools
• Accurate renderings

If you are currently unemployed and interested in investing some of your time to retain existing skills or get the new Engineering GIS skills you need, check out the details of this program here or be sure to tell a friend in need.