Hi Folks,

wow, this customer really stumped me! They want to be able to enter a number
of locations at city level and then have a map with little dots at each of
the selected locations. Does anybody out there know of a tool that may be
able to do something like this? I thought that it might be possible to use
LAT/LONG with the locations and convert those to a pixel position, but I
would still rather have some third-party tool that can handle this all out
of the box (less work for me!)

Any ideas welcome!

Thanks in advance,

Jan

From:	John York
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:46:57 -0500

Depends on the customer's usage
I use ESRI's Mapping tools and their scripting language (Avenue) to work
back and forth with maps and polygons

could be overkill though besides expensive

John

"Jan Hoelterling" wrote in message
news:Y%23nuOaS4EHA.736@news-server...
> Hi Folks,
>
> wow, this customer really stumped me! They want to be able to enter a
number
> of locations at city level and then have a map with little dots at each of
> the selected locations. Does anybody out there know of a tool that may be
> able to do something like this? I thought that it might be possible to use
> LAT/LONG with the locations and convert those to a pixel position, but I
> would still rather have some third-party tool that can handle this all out
> of the box (less work for me!)
>
> Any ideas welcome!
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jan
>
>

From:	Jan Hoelterling
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:39:59 -0600

Hi John,

thanks for the suggestion. I really have no experience with this at all. The
usage for this is mainly for sales presentations, to show all of the company
locations without having to manually fill the map every time.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but this is the best short
explanation I can come up with.

Could you please give me a little more details about the tool you described?

Thank you,

Jan

From:
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Mon, 13 Dec 2004 14:09:04 -0500

Jan,

Check out Manifold www.manifold.net . It can do all you would need.
Generally as good as ESRI products but much less expensive. Also a great
users group at http://www.georeference.org/Forums/index.asp.

Carlyle

"Jan Hoelterling" wrote in message
news:KQsGpPU4EHA.1088@news-server...
> Hi John,
>
> thanks for the suggestion. I really have no experience with this at all.
> The
> usage for this is mainly for sales presentations, to show all of the
> company
> locations without having to manually fill the map every time.
>
> It's a bit more complicated than that, but this is the best short
> explanation I can come up with.
>
> Could you please give me a little more details about the tool you
> described?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jan
>
>

From:	Jan Hoelterling
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:23:40 -0600

That looks very good - I will check it out. The price is definitely
reasonable.

Thank you very much for the suggestion!

Jan

From:	John York
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:57:02 -0500

I see you have less expensive alternatives that look like they will do the
job for you

I am stuck with ESRI because of my clients but then after learning it, I
like it

John

"Jan Hoelterling" wrote in message
news:KQsGpPU4EHA.1088@news-server...
> Hi John,
>
> thanks for the suggestion. I really have no experience with this at all.
The
> usage for this is mainly for sales presentations, to show all of the
company
> locations without having to manually fill the map every time.
>
> It's a bit more complicated than that, but this is the best short
> explanation I can come up with.
>
> Could you please give me a little more details about the tool you
described?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jan
>
>

From:	Rick Gearardo
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:56:33 -0500

Hi John,

What do you use it for? What form does the input data have to be in?

I have a service app and it would be cool to map out the customer locations
to see what the geographic concentration is.

Do you use it with dBase, stand alone, or import dBase files?

Rick

> I am stuck with ESRI because of my clients but then after learning it, I
> like it

From:	John York
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Wed, 15 Dec 2004 15:24:26 -0500

ESRI's Arc Info is a lot of overkill for such an application - my clients
are governments, local mostly, and they use ESRI's products to create detail
maps of utility locations, plot projected runoff situations when considering
a parking lot application, and of course laying out the individual parcels
of land that make up the town or county

ESRI was designed to use .DBF tables for data storage - and it still can,
and they have a dbase-like language that allows you to program just what
layers of maps are used and what the end-user can do when viewing maps. I
just RUN() an avenue program to allow my users to select parcels and view
different layers as related to the properties in town

I'm looking real close at that Manifold system product as a possible
replacement for the smaller towns that have neither the resources or
abilities to use the bigger solution.

Almost all mapping (done by outside companies) is done in digital format
these days - and usually using a derivative of Auto-Cad (Like ESRI) so the
digital maps themselves are easy to come by

John

"Rick Gearardo" wrote in message
news:hr3on9g4EHA.1092@news-server...
> Hi John,
>
> What do you use it for? What form does the input data have to be in?
>
> I have a service app and it would be cool to map out the customer
locations
> to see what the geographic concentration is.
>
> Do you use it with dBase, stand alone, or import dBase files?
>
> Rick
>
> > I am stuck with ESRI because of my clients but then after learning it, I
> > like it
>
>

From:	Jan Hoelterling
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:23:05 -0600

Yes, I think that solution will work well. I'm about to purchase it to test
it.

Jan

From:	David Stone
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:49:03 -0800

Jan Hoelterling wrote:

> Yes, I think that solution will work well. I'm about to purchase it to test
> it.

Jan, it is a heck of an app for the price...I don't see how they can sell it
for so little. It looks like it can be run via OLE-autoclient. So you'd have
your customer buy a copy and your app would run it?

I'm tempted to buy it just because it looks like so much fun to play with ;-)

David

From:	Jan Hoelterling
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:53:05 -0600

Hi David,

I'll let you know my findings - haven't had a chance to get it yet.

They are offering a "runtime only" version for $100 per copy, so that's how
I plan on handling the distribution.

Jan

From:	Simone Bartoccioni
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:42:17 +0100

I use MS MapPoint

Ciao

Simone

"Jan Hoelterling" ha scritto nel messaggio
news:Y%23nuOaS4EHA.736@news-server...
> Hi Folks,
>
> wow, this customer really stumped me! They want to be able to enter a
> number
> of locations at city level and then have a map with little dots at each of
> the selected locations. Does anybody out there know of a tool that may be
> able to do something like this? I thought that it might be possible to use
> LAT/LONG with the locations and convert those to a pixel position, but I
> would still rather have some third-party tool that can handle this all out
> of the box (less work for me!)
>
> Any ideas welcome!
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jan
>
>

From:	Jan Hoelterling
Subject:	Re: Map geographic locations?
Date:	Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:22:35 -0600

Thank you, Simone. I looked at that, it does not seem like the best solution
for what I need. Price is definitely an issue...

Jan