Sign Inventory

[NancyGnanicys]

I am trying to create a street sign geodatabase for collecting location/condition data.  I came across the LGIM site with the template for collecting it.  Since there are multiple signs for a single pole, it makes sense to have it as a pole feature class related to the table of signs, however, after the collection efforts, I am unable to symbolize the signs to display since it is in a table and not feature class.  I tried to do a join, but since there is a one to many, it only matches the first one and ignores the other signs and thus did not work.  Relates, does not since I can not see the tables categories in order to symbolize.  If I collect as a featureclass, I will have signs with different  coordinates, which is not accurate as they may be on one pole.  Anyone have an idea or suggestion, I am having a mental block.



http://help.arcgis.com/en/localgovernment/datadictionary.html#TableSign

[HeenaLee]

Nancy,

Here is what we did with Sign Inventory. There are up to 4 signs in each sign poles in our case. So, we created one point feature class of poles. The Pole ID is the unique ID. There are attributes of Sign1,Sign2,Sign3, and Sign4 in one feature class. This worked good for the collection. We have not split the sign feature class yet, but you can split the sign feature class into 4 feature classes per sign after collection. All 4 feature classes will have the same Pole ID. So, you can join them in the future if necessary.

With your existing data, you might want to have all signs in one feature class by joining multiple times. After having one feature class with all signs, then proceed with what I mentioned above.

[JoshuaDamron]

Nancy,
  Sounds like you started off in the right direction with your sign inventory (using related tables for signs & poles in a feature class). You noted your poles as being in a feature class, I assume this means that they are in a geodatabase of one sort or another?  I�??m pretty sure that to return more than the first record in a one to many the data has to be in a geodatabase.  You can read about it here:  http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//005s0000002n000000  A quote from the Help is �??If you are using geodatabase data to create the join, all matching records are returned. If you are using nondatabase data, like shapefiles or dBASE tables, to create the join, only the first matching record is returned.�?�

I would be interested to hear about how you are planning to visually map the signs.   I had some interns start the task of a sign inventory a few years ago (using Google Street View & our high quality aerial imagery to plunk points down).  While we got some great location information, overall it didn�??t end up working out perfectly because we tried to have signs and poles in the same feature class.  It was kinda one of those �??we have an intern lets find something for them to do�?� type moments.  We are in the process of moving all our data to the LGIM so I'm sure that I will be cleaning up this dataset and converting it to the LGIM like you have done. 

A hurdle we came across was that we really wanted to symbolize all of the sign blades on the pole.  Ideally the symbols could be organized similarly to how they are arranged on the pole.  Having an effective visual on the map would really help decision makers & field crews to locate signs.  I�??m not sure ArcGIS is up to this complex of a symbology task.

I�??d appreciate it if you would post back with what you have learned from your project and how you went about/plan to go about symbolizing your signs.