FME - the Ultimate tool for GIS Users

For the past few years, I have been using FME (Feature Manipulation Engine) in my daily workflow. The software is created by Safe Software (http://www.safe.com/) who also produce add-on extensions for ArcGIS and MapInfo.

FME is a spatial ETL tool (ETL = Extract, Transform, Load). It allows users to create workflows (saved as workspaces) to work through and solve spatial problems, check for data errors, make data corrections, perform spatial analysis, and even easily populate databases. The power of the software comes from a combination of the sheer volume of formats that it can read and write and from the advanced tools that are easy to use yet very powerful.

FME is so powerful, I can't believe some of the things it can do. I use it to find nearest neighbours and to merge datasets together. I found in ArcMap, when doing a join on a large dataset, I could be waiting for eons. Now, I just pop the data into FME Workbench and within seconds, I have my joined dataset. This is just the tip of the iceberg on what the software can do.

I recommend that everyone tries out this software. There were spatial manipulations that I wanted to do in model builder but required custom scripts. Most of this functionality is provided free in FME. You can get a free trial from their website. But be warned - this software is a little tricky to use at first - the documentation is cumbersome but there are some free tutorials that should get you started.

There is an FME user group where you can post questions and the support from the company is also top notch.

AND NO, I did not get paid to write this!