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On The Exhibiton Floor at AU
By GeoCommunity Staff - December 11, 2002
SpatialNews AU 2002 Home
It's always fun to spend your coffee break wandering through the exhibition hall, and that's exactly what I did most mornings.
Ofcourse Autodesk had all of their latest solutions and software releases available to test (we won't go into this here), however,
there was also a number of presenters and industry partners strutting their stuff. Here's just a few of the things that got my
attention on the floor at AU.
Cool Exhibitors
Matrox Parhelia -
One booth I was totally excited about visiting was by matrox Parhelia... who??
I had to ask myself exactly that, however, once I saw their stuff I was sold. These guys develop the Matrox Parhelia graphics card
and a host of development tools, however, what got my attention was the OpenGL acceleration across 3 screens (aka. Surround Design). This is the ultimate
solution to the cluttered screen. Picture yourself strapping together 3 monitors yet as you pan, zoom, and scroll around the display updates accordingly on all
3 monitors as if they were meshed together as one. Another useful option is the ability to perhaps use 2 screens for your full CAD/GIS display environment and
use the third display device for your tabular data. no more Alt-Tabbing between apps, no more minimizing windows, or docking all your toolbars to free up
valuable screen realestate. I'm fortunate enough to not be tied to a workstation all day long anymore, however, if I ever find myself in that situation again
this driver is on the top of my list. For seamless display acrross monitors, speed, and sharpness the several hundred dollar pricetag makes this a no-brainer.
Increase your productivity by using 3 display terminals
Fujitsu Tablet PC - Tablet PCs have been making the headlines alot lately. One producer of these handy gadgets that was present was Fujitsu.
I head the pleasure of getting a first hand look at the ST4000 Series Tablet PC. Developed for the mobile professional,
this unit is an excellent alternative to any handheld PDA. Sporting a Pentium III Processor the ST4000 series runs at
800MHz on the MS XP Tablet PC OS. The unit can be carried (like a notepad), optionally accompanied with a keyboard,
or docked in your office and function as your desktop PC. Users can run typical desktop apps on the unit, however, the real
strength of owning one is the ability to use the backlight feature and the character recognition functionality to encode you
manual scribes. The sucess rate of the OCR technology is still questionable and depends greatly on the legibility of the electronic
hand-written characters users provide (think of using an etch-a-sketch and you'll get the idea). Dimensions: 11.86h"x8.66w"x~1"d and 3.3 lbs.
Cost, starting at $2,100
ST4000 Series - click to view in docked position
Optional features:
- optical CD-ROM or DVD/CD-RW
- 802.11b Wi-Fi(TM)
- 10.4" VGA display - rotatable
- electromagnetic digitizer
- 256 MB RAM, expandable to 768
- 20 or 40 GB hard-drive
- 56k modem
- 10/100 Base TX ethernet
- 2 USB ports
- Infrared port
- lock slot
- lithium ion battery (4.5 hour)
- AC adapter
- considering a Tablet PC? Check out this useful resource from MS
Also, keep in mind there are a number of products to select from including options from Compaq/HP, Acer, toshiba, and ViewSonic (to name a few)
Hitachi software Global Technology was present showing off AnyGIS* and their raster to vector conversion suite.
The company's Image Series product suite, designed specifically for AutoCAD users, provides users with the ability to
edit images, trace lines, recognize text, lines, and symbols. Its best described as a suite of advanced raster management,
vectorization, and editing tools. So what can you accomplish with the products?
- Cleanup and geoposition scanned images
- Georectify prior to cleanup
- Register additional images and mosaic
- Auto vectorize linework and text
- Find and insert symbols at any angle
- color separation
- Batch process
- Erase vectorized rasters
- Read and writre TIFF, BMP, GIF, and SPG
- Despecle and smoothing
- Snap-to-raster functionality
Automated and semi-automatic raster-to-vector conversion is a proven time-saver and yours-truly can attest to this, having
used numerous R2V products on conversion projects in the past. The Image Series of users a number of options by selecting the right rpoduct from the suite.
these include ImageAutoSymbol, ImagesAutoTLX, ImageTracer, and ImageEdit.
 Trimble MediaMapper is Trimble's solution for linking GPS positional information with digital photographs.
The software creates files that are easily useable within most popular GIS platforms. How does it work? Basically,
each time-stamped photograph is matched with a time-stamped data point in the GPS coordinate file... simple stuff!
In addition to outputting data to popular formats like SHP or MIF, users can optionally output to standard html format for
direct use within an Intranet or Internet website. USers will require their own digital camera, however, rest assured,
operation is cable-free! Additional user requirements:
- Pentium II+ PC
- 64 MB RAM
- 24 MB diskspace
- CD-ROM drive
- VGA monitor
- MS Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me or NT 4.0
- Digital camera must use Design rule for camera file (DCF) system standard - est. 1998
LaunchPad Accelerator KeyPad - Getting high marks in the "cool" category is a nifty gadget from LaunchPad
called the Accelerator KeyPad. It's described by the company as a Sophisticated alias/toolbar editor to ease
customization to your needs. Think of it as another desktop tool productivity tool except this one
puts hundreds of commands at your fingertips and only one click away. If you have trouble operating a conventional 3-button mouse
or maybe your totally confused by the track-ball then maybe you better shy away from this unit! However, if you have no problem configuring
devices and can easily remember small numerical command sequences and numbers then KeyPad is for you. System requirements:
- MS Windows 98, NT 4.0, 2000, or XP
- Pentium processor
- 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended)
- AutoCAD LT, r14, 2000, or 2002
Is that a CAD system in your pocket? - PocketCAD Pro is designed for users who need to take their CAD drawings
on the road. Its a fully functional CAD system that runs on windows CE compatible devices, including pocket PCs, Palmsize PCs,
Handheld PCs and Tablet devices. Powered by Autodesk technology, it reads AutoCAD DWG and DXF files from r12 through 2002. It also
supports Microstation DGN files. PcketCAD Pro offers users numerous Edit, Measure, and Viewing commands.
PocketCAD's programming API allows
3rd party development and integration of PocketCAD with external
input devices such as distance measuring lasers, GPS and other
devices. FYI, those of you gathering field measurements may be interested in the latest PocketCAD/ Disto bundle offering
users a compaq iPaq PDA, Leica Disto Pro4 Laser tool, PocketCad software, cables, straps, and bag for $1599 - contact pstack@seilerinst.com
and please tell em Glenn sent ya!
Other "GIS" related Exhibitors Worth Visiting on the web
Are you, or have you used Buzzsaw? Send details of your experiences to editor@geocomm.com
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