Create Complex Military Symbology Quickly and Easily

Redlands, California - ESRI, the world leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, mapping components, and spatial database management tools, is pleased to announce Military Overlay Editor (MOLE), a new symbol generator and editor for military applications.

Designed as an easy-to-use tool for quick and easy complex symbology creation within modern battlefield planning applications, MOLE reads the MIL-STD 2525 fifteen-character message string, along with all the other unit descriptors specified in the standard.

"MOLE provides an essential component for developers creating modern, commercial off the shelf-based command and control systems," says David Swann, defense industry manager, ESRI. "With this easy-to-use tool, our defense user community can add situational awareness capabilities to the rich range of analysis and visualization concepts that have traditionally been ESRI's strength."

MOLE is not a mapping tool. This symbol generator and editor is used to compose and position unit symbols against a background of geographic data. This map data can be traditional vector formats (ESRI shapefiles and coverages as well as vector product format data) or a wide variety of raster image formats.

Complex military situation maps are cluttered and need to be sorted. With MOLE, users can leader, either manually or automatically, many symbols that occur at the same location. MOLE will also stack symbols of identical unit types that occur at the same location. Once the battlefield symbology is composed, draft copies of the map can be printed to any standard Windows output device, or the symbol graphics can be exported for use in ArcView GIS. Since symbol graphics become standard graphics in ArcView GIS, they can be further edited in that environment.

While MOLE is designed to accompany ArcView GIS, it can operate by itself within a simple, map-based application to create symbols and 15-character message codes and associated fields, then export that information for other uses. Symbolsets exported by MOLE are platform-neutral, which allows both UNIX-based and Windows-based ArcView GIS users to use MOLE-generated graphics in their applications.

MOLE operates in the Windows 95, 98, 2000, and NT environments and is scheduled to ship in June 2000. For more information or to order MOLE, call ESRI at 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, please contact your local ESRI distributor; see www.esri.com/international for a current distributor list.