TerraGo turns 20 this year. To mark the occasion, we’re launching a series of articles exploring the history of GeoPDF and the software tools that produce, modify, and consume GeoPDF maps. In this inaugural post, we look at the early use of Portable Document Format (PDF) files and custom-built software systems that delivered geospatial applications—or GeoApps—to end users.
TerraGo’s story actually begins well before its official founding, tracing back to Layton Graphics (LGI), its parent company, from which it spun out in 2005. LGI was originally founded to address a very practical problem: how to get telecom engineering drawings into maintenance trucks back in the 1970s. TerraGo’s history is one of enabling communication and collaboration between departments and field teams, a mission that began in LGI’s earliest days. In this article, we focus on what might be called the GeoPDF chapter of that history.
SBC and LGIView: Proto-GeoPDF
In the late 1990s, as the so-called “Baby Bells”—telecom companies formed from the breakup of AT&T—began to consolidate, many of them came under the umbrella of SBC Communications (SBC). Each of these companies brought its own engineering and maintenance departments, along with distinct systems and procedures. Historically, a gap existed between these departments: engineering data was typically distributed to maintenance teams as printed paper map books, resulting in a one-way flow of information.
As SBC continued to integrate more Baby Bells, it faced two major challenges:
- Managing diverse systems for storing, managing, and producing design data across its engineering departments.
- Delivering data from these disparate systems to maintenance crews in a format that was more current and functional than stacks of printed maps.
To address these issues, SBC launched an initiative to develop a system that would enable maintenance crews to access engineering data in the field, using a uniform, system-independent platform. At the time, most CAD vendors offered proprietary, incompatible solutions. Geographic Information System (GIS) vendors were beginning to tackle this problem with automated mapping and facilities management (AM-FM) solutions, but these systems were still new, complex, and required extensive training for users.
LGI proposed a novel approach: instead of attempting to unify the back-end engineering systems, it would “print” the drawings—some of which were over 100 years old—from each system into PDF files. LGI then developed tools that allowed field crews to navigate these PDF-based map books to find the information they needed. The toolset expanded over time, adding features such as measurement capabilities, cross-map book navigation (“zoom tos”), and GPS integration. For these tools to function effectively, coordinate system metadata and other geospatial information needed to be embedded directly into the PDF files, and spatial analysis was required to generate links from index maps to detailed map pages.
This solution was built in partnership with Adobe, leveraging the extensible Acrobat platform to deploy the tools and enabling field teams to consume these proto-GeoPDF map books.
The program proved highly successful. Over several years, LGI delivered and updated hundreds of thousands of maps, packaged into thousands of map books, supporting SBC’s evolving needs. The generalization and commercialization of these solutions led to the creation of the LGIView product suite. This work, along with other PDF-powered GeoApp innovations at LGI, eventually caught the attention of the U.S. Federal Government, which was also searching for ways to move beyond paper for deploying maps, imagery, and other geospatial assets.
That, however, is a story for the next installment.
