drew|merryman

i was pretty damn excited to see google docs open their gDrive concept to the public, allowing users to upload any kind of file they wish to their google docs. now that google docs is no longer limited to spreadsheets, documents, forms and presentations, i can start treating google docs as part of my cad drawing management system, hosting .pdfs, .dwfs and even native autocad files if i wish.

i don’t know what kind of system other consulting firms use to keep track of their drawings, but i’ve got lots of experience dealing with project numbers, and a little thing called windows explorer. it gets frustrating when trying to find a geographical location by a job number. and because these are two totally different things, usually some form of a database application is used to reference the two which only adds to time and frustration. especially when that database application hasn’t updated for 10 years. i’ll avoid naming names and just jump to my idea:

i guess i look at google docs as replacing my windows explorer, and using google earth for it’s natural and very inspiring capabilities as a visual searching tool. the idea here is that i want to find a drawing for a certain traffic signal design or street lighting design as quickly as possible. searching for the intersection or roads is a no-brainer in google earth and connecting google earth to drawings on your google docs happens to be pretty simple too.

first things first, i’m going to make sure i upload all my drawings to my google docs, and i’m going to make sure that i set each file to be viewed by anyone (no sign-in required). when you allow anyone to view the file, a public link is provided for copying and pasting. in this case, i prepared each drawing in autodesk’s .dwf format and adobe’s .pdf format, and also prepared a thumbnail image of the first sheet of the drawing set. this could get as involved or as basic as you want, but for the sake of this post i’m going to keep it basic.

now, with the files prepared and the ability to access them using public links, i’m going to take advantage of google earth’s placemark feature, which is pretty much a way to bookmark a coordinate and conveniently name it. what a lot of people don’t know is that inside the description property of the placemark, standard html can be used to populate the balloon that displays when the placemark is selected. below i’m going to use simple html to insert a thumbnail image, a link to a .dwf file and a link to a .pdf file for the intersection drawings of enterprise way & leckie road in kelowna, bc. note the unpopulated quotations ” “, this is where i need to copy and paste the public links from my google docs files.

when each google docs file is made public, a link is provided. this link doesn’t directly connect with the file though. in the case of an image, google docs provides a link to view the image within the google docs interface. good thing they provide an ‘open’ link. i’m going to right click on ‘open’ and copy that link location. this will directly open up the file. the same goes for the .dwf and .pdf files, but look for ‘download’ rather than ‘open’. now it’s just a matter of fitting each link into the appropriate html tag.

now if i click on my placemark positioned at my destination of choice, the relevant drawing information hosted in our google docs is now populated in the placemark balloon. because these links are public, i can save the placemark collections as a .kmz or .kml file and these files can now be emailed to colleagues or saved to a network and made accessible throughout the office.

the thumbnail image is just big enough to let the user identify what kind of drawing the file is by the layout, whether it’s a traffic signal drawing or a street lighting drawing. and the .dwf and .pdf links let the user save or open the respective file directly from google earth.

now with my files hosted within a dynamic file management system, and connected to an intuitive visual searching tool, i benefit from:

• multiple search options: searching by intersection, roadway, address, landmark, building, neighbouring business name, etc rather than just a project number or project name.
• in familiar areas, not even inserting any search words, i may simply find panning and zooming faster.
• visually seeing neighbouring projects which would not normally be connected through a job number/windows explorer system. this is a great benefit when working in an unfamiliar area.
• providing a portable tool that can be accessed publicly or office-wide.
• not dealing with job numbers when it’s a geographical location i’m truly looking for.
• not relying on windows static searching incapability.

also keep in mind this concept could really be used for any kind of document management that revolves around geographical locations. traffic signal and street lighting drawings happens to be the topic here applicable to my work, but i can imagine this concept being suitable for many other applications.

for future topics, i have thoughts on implementing and maintaining the system as well as experimenting with the possibilities within the placemark balloon.