GeoMedia Professional version 5.1

April 22, 2003
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Distributor
Intergraph – Mapping and GIS Solutions
Huntsville, AL 35894-0001
256-730-2000
http://www.intergraph.com/gis

System Requirements

Hardware Requirements

  • Pentium III or equivalent microprocessor - minimum
  • 265 MB of free disk space
  • 512 MB RAM recommended
  • SVGA display required (Single monitor recommended). Minimum 800x600 resolution with 256 colors, recommend 1024x786 resolution and 16-bit color.
  • Access to CD-ROM drive.
  • Mouse or compatible digitizer for input.
  • Compatible plotter or printer (optional).
  • Sound card (optional).
Software Dependencies
  • Operating Systems
    • Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP6a
    • Microsoft Windows ME
    • Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3
    • Microsoft XP SP1
    • Administrator privileges are required to install and uninstall GeoMedia Professional
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer v. 3.02 or higher (needed for installation and runtime when working in the Layout Window environment).
Introduction
GeoMedia Professional v. 5.1 is the latest release of the Intergraph's GeoMedia product suite of desktop and Web-enabled mapping visualization and analysis software tools. GeoMedia Professional supplies all the functionality of GeoMedia’s spatial technology with a robust CAD-like drafting environment, providing additional smart tools to capture and edit spatial data. GeoMedia Professional stores its objects, such as map windows, legends, layouts, queries, and warehouse connections in an application file called a GeoWorkspace.


Figure 1: GeoMedia Professional User Interface

Data Warehouses
The warehouse menu allows users to create a new warehouse, connect to warehouses, edit connections, apply and define spatial filters, export features, output features and feature class definitions. Warehouses are sources of geographic and attribute data for GeoMedia Professional. Warehouses can only contain one type of geographic data in formats such as Access or MGE. Geomedia can connect to warehouses for data in the following formats: Access, Arc/Info, ArcView, CAD, FRAMME, GeoMedia Smartstore, MapInfo, MGDM, MGE, MGSM, Oracle, ODBC Tabular, SQL Server and text files. The Access and Oracle warehouses are the only types of warehouses you can create and write to through GeoMedia Professional, although you can connect to any of the other types of warehouses and have multiple warehouse connections open at the same time.

Features in GeoMedia Professional are geographic entities represented on a map by geometry and defined by non-graphic attributes in the database. A feature class is the classification to which each instance of a feature is assigned. Feature classes can contain point, linear, area, compound and text features. Once a connection is made to a warehouse, users can add feature classes from the warehouse connection to their map through the Legend menu or by pressing the Add Feature Class Legend Entry button.

Legends
The Legend menu provides commands to Add feature classes, Add query entries, Add thematic entries to the map display, and to control Legend properties such as naming a Legend and setting the default properties with the Master Legend. Feature classes that are displayed on the map will be listed in the Legend window and in the Legend properties dialog box. The Legend window can be displayed on the map through the View menu. The symbology of feature classes in Geomedia Professional is controlled through the Legend. Users can turn feature classes on or off and remove feature classes from the Legend window by right clicking on the appropriate feature classes and selecting Display On/Off or Hide Legend Entry. The Legend Properties will list the Title, Subtitle, Style, Display, Locatable and Legend Entry for all feature class entries in the current Map window of the GeoWorkspace. Feature classes can be reordered within the Legend window or Legend properties. Legend entries can be deleted by selecting the feature class in the Legend properties dialog box and pressing the Delete button or by pressing the Delete key on the keyboard.

Thematic mapping entries can be added to the Legend through the Legend menu. The user will be asked to specify the feature class and field attributes to create a thematic map of a feature class. Geomedia Professional can create multiple thematic entries automatically if the user selects multiple attributes in the Add Thematic Entry dialog box. GeoMedia Professional will only allow users to create thematic entries as unique values or graduated colors. Geomedia Professional provides color schemes to shade the features or the user can choose their own colors for each thematic range or apply a color ramp using two colors.

Editing Features in GeoMedia
The Edit menu in GeoMedia Professional has tools to edit features, attributes and geometry and to set properties for the North Arrow, Scale Bar and the Selected Set. The Edit menu also has an Undo and Redo commands that can be used with editing. The Feature tools in the Edit menu has commands to Delete, Merge, Split, Copy, Copy Parallel and Change Feature Class for selected features. The Geometry tools in the Edit menu has commands to Move features, Rotate features, Spin, Trim, Trim to Intersection, Extend, Extend to Intersection, Construct Circular Fillet, Reverse Direction, Re-digitize, and Insert an Intersection. The Attribute tools in the Edit menu can update attributes in the feature class that are specified by the user or attributes can be copied from a source feature class. Table attributes that are based on geometric units, such as area or distance, can be updated easily to any measurement units specified by the user.

GeoMedia Professional includes a full set of production tools to help users capture clean, accurate data the first time with minimal editing. Automatic vector breaking and coincident geometry digitizing enables users to avoid traditional digitizing problems, such as slivers, gaps, and intersections without nodes. The Tools menu has commands for validating and fixing geometry, validating and fixing connectivity, viewing a feature's geometry information, and registration of image and vector data where the user can specify the registration points on the existing map. The Options command in the Tools menu has tabs for Map Display, SmartLocate, General, Placement and Editing, Layouts and File Locations. The Placement and Editing tab (See Figure 2) has options to set the Stream tolerances, Maintaining coincidence, Break linear features, Use default height value, Automatically add legend entries, Copy attributes from previous feature, Display Properties dialog for new features, and Use existing geometry when digitizing.


Figure 2: Placement and Editing Tab of the Tools>Options menu

The SmartSnap toolbar, shown in Figure 3, includes six types of vector snaps and six types of raster snaps that can be used when placing or editing a feature's geometry. The raster snaps can only be used if the raster image is in binary format. During placement or editing, snap glyphs will appear if a one or more snaps are appropriate at a given cursor location. The snap glyph will take on the image of the appropriate tool on the SmartSnap toolbar. The Insert Feature control includes tools for point by point placement, specifying an angle to place a point from the previous point, and the ability to specify arcs with a beginning, ending and point on the edge. In addition, when errors are located, they can be easily corrected using intelligent feature placement and editing tools, such as one-point trim and extend commands, dynamic queued editing or coincident geometry editing.


Figure 3: SmartSnap toolbar

The Analysis menu provides commands to create spatial and attribute queries, manage queries, joining, buffering, geocoding coordinates or points, analyzing geometry, analytical merging and aggregating. Analyzing Geometry can be used to find potential problems that need to be corrected. Analyze Geometry calculates geometric statistics for each feature instance of a selected feature class or query to find small areas and short lines.

Layouts
The layout window can be accessed through the Windows menu. Layouts can have multiple layout sheets for GeoWorkspaces that contain several map windows. Switching between layout sheets is similar to changing worksheets in Excel using the tabs on the bottom to change to the different layouts. There are two components to the layout window, working sheets and background sheets. The background sheet is used to place graphics that you want to display on more than one sheet, such as a border, title block, or logo. The working sheet is where you design the layout document or you can attach elements that are setup on the background sheet. Layouts can be exported as templates which can be imported into future GeoWorkspaces.

New Functionality in version 5.1

Improved Plotting:

  • Batch plotting utility
  • Export the layout window as a raster file
  • Windows commands on a map frame in a layout window
  • Simplified map registration in the layout window
  • Resize the map graphics smartframe using the file handles
  • Export Layout command – export frames with graphics to new Layout Sheet file
  • New customization
Improved Map Presentation – Symbology:
  • Support correct display for boundaries of adjacent area features when using non-solid line styles.
  • Load and save styles Saved of styles
  • Reuse of styles in other GeoWorkspaces
  • Style libraries
  • Support weight ramps in thematic dialog
  • Set the style for all entries of a thematic
  • Symbol creation
Data Servers:
  • Better support for complex views in Oracle object
  • SQL Parser improvements
  • Define Warehouse Configuration File utility
  • Compound key support
  • Text position improvements
  • Password obfuscation
Other:
  • New coordinate systems
  • Other new functional Attributes.
The following link on Intergraph's website contains a complete description of all the new features in Geomedia Professional v. 5.1.
http://www.intergraph.com/gis/geomedia/documents/GM51functionality.pdf

Conclusion
GeoMedia Professional is designed for users that need additional functionality to create and edit spatial data. The software builds on the current GeoMedia software with specific tools for GIS data capture and editing. GeoMedia Professional uses standard RDBMS technologies for its data model to store, access and manage spatial data using Access and Oracle databases. One common GIS function that I didn't see in the tutorial or the Help menu was the ability to graph data within GeoMedia Professional.

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