Case Study:
Atlantic Air Survey Ltd Gains Productivity
with PDT
Download the Case Study [pdf]
Right: Boeing Autometric customers experience +20% efficiency gains with Pliable Display Technology.
Innovative Digital Mapping Specialists
Atlantic Air Survey Limited is a forward-looking geographic information technology firm that continually seeks out more efficient production processes and procedures to better serve their clients. Their certified photogrammetrists and GIS technicians specialize in photogrammetry, GIS, data conversion, digital orthophotography, quality control and related land information services, and serve a wide customer base of Engineers, Surveyors, Planners and Land Developers working in the Transportation, Utilities, Forestry, Mining, Environmental and various Government Sectors throughout North America.
Facing the Challenge
Priding themselves on their streamlined approach to project planning and cost controlled overheads, Atlantic Air presents some of the most competitive price offerings in the digital mapping industry. However, current labour-intensive processes such as vector collection and quality control tasks often result in long implementation schedules and generally prohibit cost savings, quality, and service results from being realized by customers. The challenge for Atlantic Air was to reduce the work redundancy of their specialists and shorten the production processes and procedures involved with vector collection and quality control tasks.
Above: An aerial photo in Boeing's vector collection software [L]. The same photo with a PDT lens magnifying an area of interest [R].
Atlantic Air Survey Ltd has reported significant increases in efficiency since adopting PDT.
PDT Provides Efficiency Gains of 20%
In April 2002, Atlantic Air upgraded its stereo plotters and softcopy workstations, and started using the IDELIX stereo PDT lensing capability available in Boeing Autometric's latest versions of SoftPlotter (4.0) and KDSP (1.2). The PDT lens by IDELIX is a visualization technology that addresses the challenge of viewing high-density data sets and images on a limited size screen display. PDT enables photogrammetrists to perform editing and quality control tasks more efficiently by magnifying a portion of the imagery under the lens in real time. This allows a close-up view of imagery beneath the lens while maintaining a connected overview of imagery surrounding the lens, thereby facilitating navigation and editing within the imagery without the need for zooming in and out. With PDT, Atlantic Air has reported efficiency gains of at least 20% in their data editing and collection process.
"Atlantic Air Survey Limited has been using Boeing Autometric's new stereo PDT lensing capability in SoftPlotter 4.0 and KDSP 1.2," reports Paul Lumsden, President of Atlantic Air Survey Ltd. "We have found that the increased functionality in using the stereo lensing option has made a significant contribution to our production process. The real-time zoom option enables us to edit and collect data concurrently resulting in a timesavings of at least 20%. This approach has proven to be especially useful when editing contours and DEM data and performing quality control tasks."
PDT: The Right Choice for Viewing and Editing Your Data
The elimination of zoom and pan processes has resulted in Atlantic Air providing more efficient completion of projects at a significantly improved operating margin. As Todd Ham, Product Manager at Boeing Autometric states, "A 20% labour reduction translates into an extreme competitive advantage in both project turn around times and price offerings. Simply put, the productivity gains achieved as a result of using PDT in our software are tremendous."
