First Question of the Week! Tell us the first way you used FME. | Community (2024)

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I used FMEfor the first time during my internship at LFV (Sweden) as a part of a GIS education, in 2009 I think. I used it to convert files between different coordinate systems. Today I use both Form and Flow in my work and I love it😃

If I remember correctly, my first introduction to FME was studying a colleague's workspace about 10 years ago. This workspace performed checks on data from our self-written software, but contained an error. Without prior knowledge of FME, I managed to find and fix the error. That was the beginning of many years of use of FME, which still continues today.

Extracting vector data from PDF’s and populating a dashboard with the results.

My first encounter with FME was around 2010 when I used it to transform a dataset from one coordinate reference system to another.

I first used FME for a University course for my masters degreewhere we had an assignment to create a 3D model of a small city using a pointcloud, building footprints, and some public space geometry. I started in the middle of the academic year so I had no actual GIS knowledge and this was the first course I had to do. I was basically using FME to do GIS stuff with 0 GIS knowledge and 0 IT like background (I did architecture). Thank god we had to partner up for the assignments or else I would have floundered. The other student helped me out a lot and gave me a crash course in GIS and geometry. He built the workflows and explained how everything worked to me so I could write the report we needed to submit. It was kind of a great way to learn because you can't write a good report without understanding every single step that was taken in FME.We got a good grade and continued to partner up for the rest of the course, I was able to help more with the workflow building as the course went on.

As a senior-level geospatial data analyst, I have heard of FME, yet I have never had the chance to use it. Then last yearI got a contract consulting for a major company in New York City, which uses FME as part of their GIS architecture. I took a couple of trainings and created my first FME Form workbenches. Now I am in the process of adapting them for FME Server and will soon have the satisfaction of seeing them in production.

My use of FME was actually the ESRI data interoperability extension. The extension significantly reduced my efforts in converting ArcSDE based street data to a GeoMedia Warehouse for Intergraph Public Safety CAD mapping. The workflow was automated completely through model builder, so I was free to work on other tasks while the pc crunched the data through each process.

Back in the 90s we used the Universal Translator to migrate data for university research from one format to another. It was probably 2 years before I realized there was more to the software.

My first use of FME was to combine multiple excel sheetswith spatial data coming from my company’sdatabase, and setting up a recurring process for that task.

My boss at the time, this was in the year 2000, met Dale and Don at some kind of GIS or map event and he thought that FME was a good program for getting maps from different sources together and transform them into a suitable background map for network information systems. And one day there was a box on my desk with manuals and an installation disc to solve it. I have used FME regularly since then and actually, I have kept that box as a fun memory item.

I switched my job 4 months ago to a new position that requires FME. I went to safe.com and signed up for online training courses. Those courses, taught by Ryan and Sam, introduced me to FME and quickly brought me up to speed, enabling me to create apps. So far, I have created a few apps, such as an app for converting DWG files to shapefiles, an app for feeding spatial information for parcels extracted from tabular data (which involved many cleaning steps to parse out parcels), and an automation to generate HTML reports from Survey123 submissions. I would say I have had a taste of FME and I like it. I look forward to embracing its power in my work.

The first time I used FME was in college for an assignment that involved converting different dataset formats into esri geodatabases, utilizing Coded Domains and Subtypes. I was fascinated by the drag-and-drop UI and how efficient it was to construct an ETL process versus developing one in Python. Today, I use it on a daily basis to assist the community and customers. It's a really great and powerful tool!

I had hundreds of DXF files with separate layers that I needed to change to MapInfo table files for a utility pole inventory we needed to do in Mississippi. That was normal for me, but I wanted to see if there was an easier way to handle all the automation I was trying to do. Lo, and behold, FME is this application made specifically to convert GIS formats. I had no idea what I was getting into, but it looked pretty cool. I asked the boss if I could use my credit card to get a license and test it, thinking I wouldn’t use it that often. Wow was I wrong. It didn’t take long to find out it did everything better and faster than I could imagine. That was in 2010.

The first time I used FME was at UNBC in Prince George for one of my GIS courses in 2010. We used FME to combine various geospatial formats and convert them into one coordinate system and filetype. I think we also used it to combine satellite images into one file. I hadn’t used FME much again until I joined Safe last year.

I first used FME when I was on a co-op with the Regional Municipality of York in 2022. I was able to use FME to read in road construction data from multiple municipalities and create an automation which detects conflicts between road construction projects as a way to collaborate and save tax-payers moneybetween the region and the municipality.

I ran a series of workbenches written by others that did quality checks on huge spreadsheets and then loaded that data into an SDE. Whenever there were failures running the workbenches, I had to diagnose the issues. Also, after the authors left the company I was forced to make updates to the workbenches as schemas, file paths, etc. changed and transformers needed updating. All this was a great way to learn!

I used FME for the first time to resolve conflicts between different data sources for 911 rural addressing, making sure emergency services had all the correct address and road data to reach each location. It was a fun project that made me feel like I was making an impact, and would’ve taken a million times longer without having FME!

Back in late 90s, first time was writing a Smallworld (now owned by GE Vernova) ACP communicating with a web based GIS application and FME to read/write AutoCAD DXF files in/out of Smallworld for a Water Utility in Sydney. Thousands of lines made the FME mapping file with the .fme extension written in TextPad. No workbenches back in those days :) Just functions and factories ! I believe FME is still the best ETL for Smallworld Data.

As a GIS engineer, I have discovered numerous data silos in Chennai’s water distribution system. My friend recommended that I attempt FME, a potent data integration tool. Since I was unfamiliar with it, I gradually picked up the skills on my own. It was also exciting to link the data filter and manipulate, among other things. After everything, I'm glad to recommend FME to my company and I hope it happens soon.

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