Geospatial World 2002... GeoMedia 5.0 Product Update
Where: Renaissance Waverly Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia
When: June 9 - 12
Special Sessions @ GeoSpatial World 2002 - GeoMedia 5.0, GeoMedia Grid, & GeoMedia Terrain
David Holmes, Director of product strategy, Intergraph Mapping & GIS Solutions announced to a crowded auditorium
last week that GeoMedia is now ready for your workflows... of course he's refering to GeoMedia 5.0,
Intergraph's flagship GIS.
The product is now in it's 5th year of development, having had an offical release/upgrade in each of the past
4 years - Holmes revealed to me that this will be the first year of a "dot" series, with GeoMedia 5.1 anticipated
for release in December. In his address to the GeoSpatial World audience, Holmes explained how GeoMedia
uses industry standard architecture, and is now ready for MGE users to seriously consider, particularly
since most of the MGE functionality can be found in 5.0. Rest assured though, Intergraph will continue to support
MGE.
Holmes rattled off a lengthy list of would-be users who should now be ready for GeoMedia, including
local government, regional government, utilities, commercial map producers, LBS providers,
public works, road management, rail, airports, National land management agencies, and the defence industry... just to name a few!
The latest GeoMedia architecture supports desktop clients, web browsers (internet/intranet),
handheld devices (wireless, XML, cradle), and foreign services. Noting that the number of users, the
volumes of available data, and applications in development will all increase signifgantly in the future, the next
logical step for the product will be to support XML web services (heard of .NET?), this will first be introduced
in web and mobile services.
So what's new?
Read only live connections to CAD files (Bentley & DWG)
Export functionality, supporting SHP, MIF, DGN, and DWG
Read/write live connections to MS Access, SQL Server, Oracle, and IBM DB2
Read only live connections to web-based OGC compliant data
What will users of GeoMedia and GeoMedia Pro notice?
presentation and plotting improvements such as:
- user defined line styles
- enhanced text placement
- support for leader lines
- more CAD-like data capture and edit functionality
- improved data access support
Do you have the need to distribute your data warehouses to non-GeoMEdia or even non-GIS users?
The good news is that the GeoMedia Viewer is expected to be released this September. Look for a
freely available, redistributable product.
In addition to the release of GeoMedia 5.0, a number of industry products have been announced targeting the
local government, water, waste water, cadastre, and transportation markets:
Public Works Manager - infrastructure management tools with rules-based capture, editing and dimensioning
Transportation Manager & Analyst - linear referencing system will increase productivity in the maintenance of
road systems
Parcel Manager - featuring a powerful parcel editor designed specifically for cadastral and property mapping workflows.
What about 3D and terrain analysis?
In addition to the release of GeoMedia 5.0, a couple of supporting products have also been announced.
GeoMedia Terrain 5.0 - for generating realistic 3-dimensional terrain views in the GeoMedia environment. Terrain
functionality includes color-coded elevations, shaded relief, slope, aspect & contour generations, profile generation, and flythroughs. Accepted
data formats included USGS DEM, USGS SDTS (availabel from the gisdatadepot.com!) Intergraph grid, DTED 1 & 2,
and GMT ASCII. See www.intergraph.com/gis/gmterrain
GeoMedia Grid - enabling advanced grid analysis within GeoMedia, combining vector data with raster grid analysis.
Developed by Keigan Systems, this product is perhaps better described as a COM-based MFworks for GeoMedia.
Available fucntionality includes:
- surface analysis
- convert grid to feature class or feature class to grid
- grid reprojection
- grid warehouse attribute connectivity
- 3D visualization
- grid layer map algebra
As a provider of DEM data (you know, we also are one of the exclusive providers of USGS DEM data) I
was very pleased to see what GeoMedia users can now accomplish using digital elevation data with Grid. Jayme from
Keigan Systems provided me with a very detailed look at the product, which also, is fully customizable
using VB or Visual C++. Fucntional within GeoMedia or GeoMedia Pro, I learned a couple of interesting secrets
available to users (particularly non Pro users... hint), however, if I told you I'd have to kill ya! Thanks for the tour Jayme,
and for standing in the lengthy beer lineup for me as well! My take on GeoMedia Grid, powerful, simple to use, and very flexible.
See intergraph.com/gis/gmgrid
The coolest things about GeoMedia 5.0
- You can download a fully functional demo and try it for yourself
- For a limited time you can get free training online see intergraph.com/gis/training/
- A totally open architecture enabling users to incorporate data from multiple sources/projections without the need for translation
- a freely distributable viewer (GeoMEdia Viewer)... coming in the fall
Who else uses GeoMedia?
Here's just a small sample of IMGS Solution users around the Globe
- City of Winnipeg, Manitoba - Water & Waste water dept., Corporate Services Dept.
- AmilGeo - Federal Armed Forces Intelligence Office (Germany)
- Oklahoma Dept. of Transportation
- Central Water Commission, India - A complex hydro information system, funded by the World Bank
- Catalonia Roads Dept. - Spain
- City of Hamilton, Ontario - Public Works
- Wind Telecommunicazioni, Italy
- Agriculture West Australia
- City of Detroit, Michigan
- abril.com - generates online maps for tourism industry
- The Haugue, Netherlands - e-Government
- Singapore Land Authority - LandNet Project
- Taiwan High Speed Rail Project - a 345 Km project worth more than $15 billion
- New york City Transit - a coordinated effort at EM center. pier 92
- NIMA - map/data production services - this relationship is more than 20 years old!
- ... and many more! Are you one of them? Please tell us
If you have news, announcements, or comments about GeoMedia 5.0, please be sure to tell us about it.
Send details to Glenn (editor@geocomm.com)
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