Thanks for everyone's replies. It looks like I'm not
the only one looking for this feature in MI - I'm a
newcomer to the MI camp, and when I found it had
almost zero raster functionality, I was amazed. Like
Rich, I also used Arcview with the Spatial Analyst
add-on last year for the same kind of job, and after a
bit of script coding it worked like a dream. I'm new
to MI, and only do mapping as a part of my job (GSM
Radio Planning), but this seems like a massive gap in
MI's features.
Due to time and cost constraints, we eventually
digitised the maps by hand, but I did find a program
that's tailor-made for the task. It's called R2V, and
can be found at http://www.ablesw.com - it takes TIF
files as inputs, and performs edge-detect or
centreline-detect for particular colours, exporting as
Mapinfo MIF, Arcview SHP or Autocad DXF. It could do
with a little refinement - I couldn't find how to
export vector IDs with the MIF file, and it truncated
the coordinate system I gave it - but it did the job
quite quickly and easily, and a couple of edits in the
MIF file afterwards sorted anything it couldn't
handle. There's probably other software out there
that's better or cheaper - this was the first I came
across, but it worked fairly well.
Damian
--- Neil Havermale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Richard Greenwood wrote:
>
> > >Damian has a reasonable request and one that
> seems to identify somewhat of
> > >a weakness in MI, i.e., ability to do something
> with raster images.
> >
> > >I use MI and Vertical Mapper. Vertical Mapper
> uses is quite flexible with
> > >grid (grd & grc) files.
> >
> > I suggested to VM that they provide an image
> import function in their
> > software, and they blew me off with a statement to
> the effect that "we only
> > work with grids that have data, and images don't
> have data, because they
> > are just pictures". Which seems pretty dumb; like
> remote sensing and image
> > analysis are just "pictures"? Duh.
>
> Well technically this may be correct. Simple images
> contain only a
> colorization value rather than a raster matrix of
> "sensorized" values
> calibrated to a reference scale that have been
> themed. You might also consider
> Surfer (http://www.goldensoftware.com). Lower cost,
> more powerful and faster
> than VM in my opinion. New tools coming along that
> may also give you that
> spatial analysis edge as well.
>
> > So I retreated to the ArcView camp. ArcView Image
> Analyst allows you to
> > create a grid from an image file. You can them
> export the grid from Spatial
> > Analyst as ASCII, and import it into VM, or you
> can use Spatial Analyst to
> > create vector polygons (shape files) which can be
> imported into MI.
> >
> > I think MI & VM are so superior to ArcView &
> Spatial Analyst that I hate
> > point out any areas of superior functionality. But
> VM snobbed me off, and I
> > don't think MI reads this list.
> >
> > Rich
> >
> > Richard W. Greenwood, PLS
> > Greenwood Mapping, Inc.
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > (307) 733-0203 fax: 733-4018
> > http://www.GreenwoodMap.com
> >
>
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>
>
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