Teaching Gis With Intergraph's Geomedia In A Civil Engineering Technology Program

At the Pennsylvania College of Technology, we feel that the tools of project design and management, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), should be taught along with the more usual subjects in a Civil Engineering Technology curriculum. With an NSF(ILI) grant, Pennsylvania College of Technology purchased the Intergraph MGE software suite for use in studying and teaching the capabilities of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Civil Engineering and Surveying students in our ABET(TAC) accredited Associate’s and Bachelor’s programs. After a number of years of MGE use, we decided to upgrade to GeoMedia without changing the problems to which it will be applied by Civil and Surveying students. Our first use in instruction is in our Bachelor’s program senior (fourth year) course [4]. Most students in that program have been exposed to Intergraph’s MGE through an already constructed GIS using elements of the Knoxville, TN municipal database. We had previously used those data with MGE [4] for all civil engineering and surveying students’ education [2 and 3]. P ge 11210.2 This article discusses the utility of the software when “reviewing” tasks previously accomplished using MGE and now executed with Intergraph’s GeoMedia. Concepts such as scale (representative fraction and engineering), true (as opposed to projection) azimuth, and point/line scale as applied to GeoMedia are discussed as they apply to these projects. In addition, students in the senior course (CET 414) must construct a GeoMedia work space from the coordinate system definition to spatial and attribute queries for features they will define for a vertical construction project. Students then use the results of queries to estimate concrete requirements, sheetrock and paint/primer requirements for the proposed structure.