DDS was tasked to digitize, attribute and deliver a polygonal Public Land Survey System (PLSS) .shp file and SDE coverage for all USGS-surveyed areas in the United States. Over 64,000 USGS PLSS Townships were digitized, processed, normalized, edge-matched, cleaned, and attributed to fulfill this requirement.

DDS converted all of the SDTS formatted vector files into ESRI coverages. Cleaning and editing of the SDTS polygonal features were performed in an ESRI ArcGIS Desktop environment. This task included dissolving polygons (sections and townships) split by the USGS topographic quadrangle neatlines, identifying and reporting which polygons were overlapping, duplicated and contained gaps. Attribute tables were also normalized to match the client-required attribute specifications. DDS then digitized all PLSS data not contained within the SDTS files into polygon vector features and edge-matched the newly created PLSS data to the original SDTS formatted PLSS vector dataset. An analysis was performed to identify and report any errors in the edge-matching and joining of the modified SDTS files and the newly digitized PLSS data. The resulting shapefiles files were converted into an SDE-compliant product for final delivery.