Sorry people I sent this straight to Lars instead of the list. And Mats, spot on, excuse my newbiness!
Howdy Lars! To answer your question this opinion isn't as a super user, more of a average user! I am much more proficient in the ESRI world. I would have agreed with you before my time at my current job, indeed I even argued very strongly against the idea of combining the topology as it went against the common GIS 'philosophy' that I learnt at uni. I will give a very brief background of why we do it. We have a third party software for our surveillance crews (AssetMap ... Urrgg!) that is used to identify hazardous assets in the city of Melbourne. This crummy software has absolutely no layer control, hence the polygon and point data must be in the same layer or it will mean an extra 6K for a toughbook and another 6K for licences (paid for by the LAYER! Unbelievable but true), across 7 contracts that's 84,000 dollars (admittedly Australian dollars!) that has been saved by this feature. I get around the visibility of point data by using a few thematic techniques but the system works really well. You could argue that it is bad third party software setup that causes this technique to be used...and I would agree with you. As asset surveillance is booming and universal across local government (a lot are using assetmap), this problem would be quite common, I already know of one LG who have ESRI and have had to spend a fortune outsourcing to develop their own in-house remote GIS techniques. In short these decisions were made when GIS was new, and hardcore IT guys with no knowledge of GIS common practices were making the decisions - which means problems for new GIS professionals like me! Regards... Morgan Ellingham GIS Technical Officer Level 1, 150 Jolimont Rd, East Melbourne Ph: (03) 9261 5065 Mob: 0419 145 666 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Lars V. Nielsen (GisPro) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 3:35 AM To: Ellingham Morgan Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. Hi Morgen, > Ahh the never ending debate True, but even more relevant today, after years of stand-still on MapInfo's part ! >One comment in this string of emails I would like to pick up on. > >Handy maybe, but mixed topography tables usually throw MapInfo users >into a fit. Single topology tables is not a severe limitation, >and I'll wager that the vast majority of MapInfo tables are single >topology anyway. > >Absolutely incorrect in my experience (..) As the culprit behind the statement, I need to ask you whether this is your personal experience as a super user, or an opinion ordinary users have given you ? My point wasn't that it was a bad feature - for super users - on the contrary. I personally think it's a neat thing with many applications. But I fear this sentiment isn't shared by too many ordinary users. And the majority of data I've seen at multiple customers is de-facto single topology. Best regards/Med venlig hilsen Lars V. Nielsen GisPro, Denmark http://www.gispro.dk/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ellingham Morgan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 12:36 AM Subject: RE: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. Ahh the never ending debate, I used the ESRI products at uni and found them excellent to conduct my research and present my results graphically, I am now in the workforce and use MI extensively - and have found it good enough to do my work easily and efficiently. Neither is technically better or worse, or may I say easier to learn. ESRI's base packages are pretty simple, it's the weird and wonderful extensions that get people worried (network analyst any1?). One comment in this string of emails I would like to pick up on. >Handy maybe, but mixed topography tables usually throw MapInfo users into a fit. Single topology tables is not a severe limitation, and I'll wager that the vast majority of MapInfo tables are single topology anyway. Absolutely incorrect in my experience, this excellent MapInfo feature has allowed me to combine open space areas (turf, sports fields) with infrastructure data (points - lights, litter bins etc) - on many occasions this has proven to be the difference between going ahead with our surveillance and not. I would estimate that 75% of all of our civil spatial data has a mixed topology - something I would assume would be universal across local government institutions. Each has their Positives and negatives Arc+ = Layouts, high end advanced analysis, X tools! Arc- = Cost, compartment syndrome. MI+ = stand alone package, cost, universal translator, labelling ! MI- = printing, map creation. Just my opinion as a humble end user people - thanks for letting me waste my morning whilst looking like im working Morgan -----Original Message----- From: Canfield, Andrew [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 19 February 2005 1:07 AM To: 'Frank, Claude'; MapInfo-L Subject: RE: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. Sorry I should have put that. The ESRI systems we currently use here are 3.X - 8.3 and we will be getting upgrades to v.9 pretty soon but as of yet I haven't had any experience with it other than demoing it to see if we wanted to upgrade some of our 8.3 stuff to v.9. Our current MapInfo versions are v.5 - v.7.8. I only have one user with 7.8 though the bulk of them are still running 6.5. So basically the user comparasons are based on MapInfo 6.5 against ESRI 8.3 because my dual users seem to most often have this setup on their machines as far as versions go. Andy -----Original Message----- From: Frank, Claude [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 6:54 AM To: MapInfo-L Subject: RE: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. Just curious-are these impressions reflective of the latest version of ArcGIS (v.9) or more about ESRI prodcuts historically? -----Original Message----- From: Canfield, Andrew [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 7:39 AM To: 'Flavio Hendry'; Lars V. Nielsen (HVM); MapInfo-L Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. I agree. I have to teach new users here. MapInfo is very intuitive for Windows users. It functions very much like a Windows application. ESRI functions like a Unix application. We have both types of users here and people who are used to Unix seem to pick up ESRI tools faster than those who are used to Windows only. MapInfo also wraps a lot of functionality into one touch buttons and walk through dialogs such as the afore mentioned "update column". I mean I suppose you could break it down by Windows UI design guidelines and see all the places ESRI breaks from that. One of the really hard things for people to get used to is the palette style tool sets which exist outside the main UI. Where you have your palette such as ArcToolBox and you use it's functions on the data you are working on in your editor. This is completely foreign to most Windows users. In ways like this it functions far more like apps that originated on Unix such as Gimp and Microstation than it does like a Windows app. In MapInfo everything is contained in a single UI tools are loaded from that UI into that UI. If a tool is to big it becomes it's own application such as MapMarker which you run on your data, close it down and load the data into MapInfo. I won't say the UI for MapInfo is more intuitive because it seems to depend on the users background. But for the probably 80% of my users who have only ever known Windows they pick it up much faster than they do the ESRI tools. About 20% of my user come from a Unix background and work on Sun Solaris machines. They definitely have an easier time with ESRI than do my Windows only users. I can't probably prove this in concrete numbers but I can attest to it's validity from watching numerous users over the years. The single biggest complaint I get from users besides "they are hard to use" about ESRI tools is "they are slow". The users are correct in this. Take any large dataset of single geometry and load it into MapInfo and work with it doing just simple editing, then take that same data set as a shapefile and do the same edits in ArcInfo or ArcEditor. There is a huge performance difference. On the other hand ESRI tools are much more extensible than MapInfo due to their enormous COM objects library and their internal VBA support. But if you aren't at least fairly comfortable with writing programs this does no good. It's like the VBA inside AutoCAD and now Microstation. You can do a lot with it but most of my users don't even know it's there let alone how to use it. I really believe that they target two separate markets of users. However many shops try and make them both fit and both companies try and be everything to everybody. I think users would be wise to take a good look at what they are doing and see which of the two programs most closely fits their work and datasets. I would not say that one is better than the other in either direction because some things are much easier in one than the other and vice versa. Luckily I work at a company where we support and use both so I can switch back and forth and we use FME a lot too which makes for easy moving from one file format to the other. Andy -----Original Message----- From: Flavio Hendry [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 4:35 AM To: Lars V. Nielsen (HVM); MapInfo-L Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: MI-L Differences between MapInfo and ArcView. hi lars > Again, this is a general and unproven statement, easy to say but more > difficult to substantiate. I would like to find out whether this > statement is really true. I doubt there is a way to prove that. My statement is based on more then fifteen year of experiance in the gis fields (and if I add the one of my collegues about fifty years). The experiance is (as well throug giving many training courses for MI and ArcGIS) that ArcGIS has in a lot of ways very odd terms and often completely ununderstandable menu structure/naming - such as "go find it" ... I experience that as well myself ... "where is that thing again?", "how did they call it?" ... I disagree that it hat to do to more to the "additional" features, in ArcGIS there are not too many of them ... and there are some really crucial ones missing (such as thematic mapping using expressions, imagine, not there!, or try to update columns as you do in MapInfo ... have to learn VBA ... I suppose most people do not know what VBA is ...). Basically our long years exeperience with many clients is: MapInfo is far more intuitive and let us say closer to the Windows (or Microsoft) way of doing things, people are just used to it from MS programs ... where ArcGIS has (historically) its own slang, if you speak it you are go along fine, just have to learn it, there the curve comes in ... But if you want to see something really quirky in terms of absolutely not undersandable stuff you might have a look at manifold ........... just made me throw it out the window within minutes ... Anbout the extenions mentioned by Rich: There are many MapInfo third party extensions which are more powerful and lot less expensive (such as Engage 3D from Encom beats everything 3D and Spatial Analyst do ... for a third of the price ... mindblowing that thing). And there are more out there, such as MapCAD, MapPLOT and so on ... ciao flavio --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15333 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15335 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15336 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15339 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15349 --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 15393
