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First Question of the Week! Tell us the first way you used FME.

Hi FME Community! Our first Question of the Week is here. 

In case you missed last week’s post… today we’re kicking off the Question of the Week, a brand new activity on the community to: 

  • Unlock your FME knowledge and share your triumphs
  • Shape the future of FME
  • Connect with fellow FME enthusiasts

Every week, we’ll post a simple but thought-provoking question that could be about your FME journey, the power of spatial data, FME innovation, or the future of FME.

Each weekly question you answer earns you an entry in our monthly draw for exclusive Safe swag and points toward badges! Answer today’s question and you’ll be awarded the Socializer (Ice Breaker) question. 

Let’s kick things off! For our first question, we’d love to hear how you got your start in FME. What was the first way you used FME? Tell us in the comments below.

Cheers,
The Safe Community Team

61 replies

thaverkort
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +6

My first time using FME was when I worked with Ken Bragg, Jeff Moulds, Trevor Simpson and Joost van Ulden at Ground Control Geotechnology here in Vancouver.  We needed to do some SAIF translation, and we discovered FME.  That would have been around ‘98 I believe - well before Workbench or the Viewer.  I spent a lot of hours writing workspaces with factories and functions.  Often times, a lot of my data would end up in the dreaded bone pile!  I had no idea at the time that I would go on to work at Safe for nine awesome years!  Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

alonzodlc
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +5

My first successful use of FME was to get the corner point coordinates for GeoTIFF files. I was doing this process for each individual file using GIS programs and Excel. But I decided to learn FME so that I could just create a workspace that could do all that work with the click of a few buttons. It worked great and I have been a regular user of FME since then.

I even did a talk about it at the 2019 FME World Tour in 2019. The talk isn’t on youtube but you can see an image of that original workspace at:

My talk from the 2019 FME world tour

https://www.linkedin.com/in/geomatics1/
lambertus
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +11

My first encounter was during my masters at Wageningen University in 2017. For the students who were interested, it was possible to join a training course at Sweco in De Bilt Netherlands. The broad range of options and tools of FME Desktop was a bit overwhelming at that moment. But nowadays it's my most favorite tool I use on daily basis. 

krismajury
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +4

Writing mapping files in UltraEdit to process ERCB pipeline and facility data delivered on 9-track from SCAT to Informix databases, replacing a bunch of truly obscure custom code. About 1996? And I’ve never been too far away from it since. 

LizAtSafe
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge +15

Funny enough, as a Safer (Safe Software Staff), my first time using FME was the free trial to prep for my interview. Then shortly after being hired I was thrown into the deep end of FME helping prep all the training material for the 2017 FME UC. Couldn’t imagine trying to do my behind the scenes Knowledge Base/Community day-to-day tasks without FME now! 

fmejamesl
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +4

My first was an integration for a client that pulled data from a 3rd party vendor to create work orders in a system called Cityworks (by Trimble). The solution included the following basic workflow:

  1. SFTP download data files and images from 3rd party vendor.
  2. Parse through all the data and load into a staging location.
  3. Adjust related GIS asset attributes and relationships in preparation for the target work orders using the Esri JS APIs from HTTPCallers.
  4. Create the various Cityworks workorders using the Cityworks APIs and HTTPCallers.
  5. Add additional GIS asset information to work orders using the Cityworks APIs and HTTPCallers.

Since going live in early 2023, it’s processed an average of over 100 work orders per day. Each has 15 to 20 image attachments and 3 or 4 related GIS assets. So it gets a good pounding.

Cheers!

donnie.owsley
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +5

My first jobs were to upload/download data from various FTP servers. Currently, I spend most of my time working with various APIs, which there is nothing better I’ve found to use with APIs. 

brown3k
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +3

Around 2015 RAMM (now Thinkproject Asset & Work Manager) released an API. About the same time the team I was in were looking to trial FME. It took about a day and half to work out how to get FME to talk to the RAMM API as it’s a bit fiddly. And now I use for (almost) everything: Wellington City Council & Locus boost efficiency by automating key processes - FME by Safe Software.

 

The highlight at the time was using the GeometryReplacer to convert RAMM’s Well Known Text geometry into actual geometry and GeometryExtractor to go the other way, especially after writing a python script to convert a polygon into WKT. These two transformers will always be special to me because they were the ones that proved just how powerful FME is.

drewpurzycki
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +7

The first way I used FME was a short workspace converting old Excel files into spatial data. I had never used FME prior to that and now use it almost weekly!

cfvonner
Rank
Badge +17

I first started using FME around 2002 to translate MicroStation/Intergraph MGE sewer and recycled water utility data into the original Autodesk MapGuide SDF format.  I’ve used it to do multiple GIS platform upgrades: MicroStation/MGE to Intergraph GeoMedia, then GeoMedia to Esri ArGIS Local Government Information Model (LGIM), and more recently from LGIM to the new Esri Utility Network Solutions for Sewer and Water.

We made the investment in FME Server (now FME Flow) around 2014 to automate many of our daily/weekly data translation processes.  Now we use it to automate business processes and synchronize data between ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, Cityworks, ITpipes, our Oracle ERP and permitting systems.

marcust
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +8

I first used FME when I was working for the parks and wildlife service in Queensland. I used it to grab our burnt areas data, sort out what was a hazard reduction burn as opposed to a wildfire and lay that over our fire management zones on our various protected areas to report on fire management KPIs. 

viviantang
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I had my first hands on experience with FME during my onboarding as a new employee at Safe. Participating in the FME training really helped me gain a good understand of our product, and it was fun to go through the exercises and be able to build out a simple workflow. As a marketer I don’t need to use FME for my day to day, but I’m constantly amazed by all the creative ways our users use FME!

jatoxa
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +10

First time using FME was around 15 years ago and my first workspace was built to tile and texture terrains for use in Unity. It blew my mind how intuitive it was and how efficiently it could be done for large 3D scenes. The experience has shaped everything I've done since.

 

omerseyfettin
Rank
Badge +3

I am used the FME first way, from a Metropolitan Municipality’s had lot of spaghetti data converted to spatial Geodatabase  at 2018

jferrer
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +2

We wanted to pull a lot of data from an FTP server - save to a folder, do some transformations, put in our database, output reports, notify warnings and email us stats of files on a weekly basis.
Project has gone quite far but still a little bit more  to go - email work but not the best, need validations, and still need to plan around how to output reports but now some processes have been automated that used to take 1 day’s worth of work. Now running weekly and able to put in the database. 
It feels so good to take off a bunch of manual work and replace that with just looking at my email to see how the script ran and just quickly check the database (row count) if data went in there on the day the script ran.

jurgenmack
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +9

I’m thinking it was around 2009. We were using FME  to convert excel files to KML. Another use was reprojecting images for publishing on a google earth server. 

gisbradokla
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge +13

It’s been so long ago that I can’t remember what version or what my first project was. I do know that at every job I have had since during my interview I make sure to mention that a need three tools in my belt. 
GIS, CAD, and FME. 

I now have a job that I am in FME every day of the week. I have multiple automations that are scheduled and have several apps and email triggered self serve workspaces. 
I do truly love FME

morgan.cheneir
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +4

Back in the late 90’s using FME to do NAD27 to NAD83 shifts of BC government data in Arc/Info coverages.  And translating Microstation DGN files to coverages.

nampreetatsafe
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge +12

I honestly wasn’t a frequent FME user until I joined Safe.  However, several years before becoming a Safer, my first experience with FME was with helping government organizations map their legacy backend databases to new data models.  I remember being impressed by the drag and drop UI which was far better than using SQL scripts to maintain.

deanhowell
Rank
Userlevel 1
Badge +19

My first big project using FME was with Land Services in South Australia where I assisting in developing an FME driven app to validate data from surveyors. The final workbench contained over 3000 components (yes I know that is not best practice) but it was a champion of workbenches that did the job :)

arcvancouver
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +6

Oh man, first time I used FME was back in 2004/05 while attending BCIT’s GIS program? We had a demo I think, and then a bunch of us took a one day workshop* at the old Safe Office when it was one floor in a industrial office area building. From there, never looked back haha! But I didn’t really get going until I had to use it every day as a GIS tech at UBC to help consolidate shapefiles into a standardized dataset for geography research projects. Would have taken ages otherwise!

 

*hat tip to Dale & Don for the “post-workshop scholarship” which helped… was the start of great free training since then! ;)  

tomf
Rank
Badge +13

My first FME use was while I was at college studying GIS which was mainly taught using ESRI. I was challenged by my tutor to replicate every exercise and test using FME which forced a great grounding in how FME operates fundamentally. The end of course project was to replicate a pdf map series of the local city’s cadastre just using FME, which was largely successful. From here I went straight into an FME consulting and training position and haven’t looked back!

dmitribagh
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge +14

My first experiments with FME began at MDA where a few people knew how to write mapping files, but no one wanted to deal with that new thing called “Workbench”. To me Workbench was a natural environment, I could solve  any problem with it and very quickly, I became that one person who really could do magic with FME - from writing DGNs for photogrammetrists to generating measures for road networks, from automated QC/QA-ing of manually vectorized rasters to overseeing all projects mapping documentation. Joining Safe was a logical if not inevitable step for me.

redgeographics
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +35

My first use of FME was in 1997 when I was an intern at the national spatial planning agency (for the Dutchies: Rijksplanologische Dienst van Ministerie van VROM). My internship project there was to make a wall map showing land use in The Netherlands as well the major plans for the upcoming 2 decades. I mainly used ArcInfo and a bit of MAPublisher (by Avenza) within Adobe Illustrator but FME was used (pre-Workbench) to convert some files that were delivered in a format not supported by ArcInfo.

 

Started working for a Safe partner after graduation and then after a few years (20 years ago in september!) I founded Red Geographics. We're still a partner for both Safe and Avenza 😀 (and I still have that very first map)

_jacques_
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge +7

My first encounter of FME was when I was working on my master’s thesis last year. I was working on a system to identify potholes in videos using computer vision, and connect snapshots of the videos to GPS locations stored in the metadata. It was a lot of python scripts as well as file handling which worked out great with FME. 

 

Now I use FME Flow and Forms almost every day as a systems engineer! 

:- )

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