ArcGIS- Jack of all trades but still master of all!
November 05, 2018
ArcGIS- Jack of all trades but still master of all!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ArcGIS
ArcGIS is an extremely powerful tool for many industries, but in my current geophysical surveying company we use it frequently to create site maps, overlay data, plan surveys, and figures for final reports. It is mostly used by employees who process data and finalize reports. ArcGIS allows us to make extremely detailed and accurate images with geologic features, spatial references, and pretty much anything else applicable to that project! It is incredible. Though creating images is one of many tools available, ArcGIS can also do analyses on points in an area, density, it really does anything you could want.
- Figures- from scales and legends to excellent graphic quality, ArcGIS is the best way to create detailed figures for reports and presentations
- Spatial Analysis- for my line of work, being able to calculate densities and relationships between geologic and geographic features is very useful. ArcGIS does a great job of this.
- Navigation- for such a high powered program, ArcGIS is surprisingly easy to navigate as a beginner. Though there are semester-year long classes available for learning more of the ins and outs, it is possible to teach yourself basic tasks in ArcGIS.
- Better tutorials available. While the basic functions are pretty straightforward, it would be awesome to have more resources available online to figure out specific tasks
- Saving work. The first thing they taught us about ArcGIS was to ALWAYS SAVE your project. Constantly saving it. It would be incredible if they could make ArcGIS save projects automatically while you're working on them. Fewer tears may be shed if they do so.
- The figures we can make using ArcGIS look professional and have everything a map is supposed to. They're also highly customizable (color scales, legends, etc) and really take a presentation or report from average to excellent. As a new company, it is extremely important to have quality reports and give our best to current and potential clients.
- Once you have learned the methods for data analysis you use regularly, it can save loads of time compared to previous methods outside of ArcGIS.
- The total time needed to really get comfortable with ArcGIS varies for people. Some get it quickly and some don't. It's a powerful program with lots of capabilities and it can be difficult to figure out without some sort of training (though some people do fine without). It depends on your employees, but for us it has been a great benefit despite training time because it improves our productivity and output much more.