VNS training, August 21st-23rd 2007

hans@redgeographics.com — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:08:16 +0100

Red Geographics is pleased to announce a 3-day VNS (Visual Nature Studio) training course to be held in Willemstad, The Netherlands, on August 21st-23rd.

Special guest for this training will be Adam Hauldren, who is well known for his VNS training and consultancy.

More information can be found here

redgeographics.com now also in Dutch

hans@redgeographics.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:10:31 +0100

As of today, the content on redgeographics.com will also be offered in Dutch. Currently, about 60% of the content is translated, but this will grow in the coming weeks.

To access the Dutch website, please go to http://www.redgeographics.com/nl

Avenza releases MAPublisher 7.3

hans@redgeographics.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:20:50 +0100

Avenza Announces MAPublisher 7.3 for Adobe Illustrator
- Powerful mapmaking software now enriched with even more powerful tools -

Toronto, ON, March 7, 2007 - Avenza Systems Inc., producers of MAPublisher cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator and Geographic Imager spatial tools for Adobe Photoshop announces the release of MAPublisher 7.3 for Adobe Illustrator CS2. MAPublisher 7.3 is the latest version of this powerful mapmaking software used to produce high quality maps from GIS data and is the first version to offer support for enhanced Unicode character encoding.

MAPublisher 7.3 for Adobe Illustrator is a full product update that is free to all current MAPublisher Maintenance Program subscribers and replaces the current shipping version of MAPublisher 7.2 for all new customers using Adobe Illustrator CS2. Customers using Illustrator CS may still receive MAPublisher 7.2.

"We have quickly responded to the requests of our users by quickly improving on the previous version 7.2 release and including many new functions and feature enhancements in this release,” said Ted Florence, President of Avenza, “Unicode support is a major step forward for MAPublisher as we strive to service our overseas users and enter new and exciting markets worldwide.” he added.

MAPublisher 7.3 includes all the significant new functionality introduced in earlier releases of MAPublisher 7.x including a new intelligent labeling engine, new grid, graticules and scalebar generators, a new and improved MAP attributes engine with expression builder, advanced selection filters and enhanced map index creation and image registration, as well as the following new features and enhancements.

Features of MAPublisher 7.3 for Adobe Illustrator

Enhanced Unicode character encoding

MAP Views, MAP Attributes, MAP Stylesheets and MAP Selections filters now accept Unicode characters.

Unicode character encoding for layers, character styles and graphic styles are supported when referencing them for grid generator or scale bar creation.

Unicode encoding in filenames, directories, attributes and image registration for importing and exporting of supported data formats are supported with various degrees of support.

Degree, minutes, seconds (DMS) format support for importing ASCII point data files

New MAP Stylesheets Legend creation

Quickly and easily create legends from any MAPublisher Stylesheet. Legend symbols and Stylesheet rules will be automatically created.

Various other user interface enhancements and performance improvements to improve usability.

More about MAPublisher 7.3 for Illustrator

MAPublisher 7.3 for Illustrator CS2 is powerful map production software for creating cartographic-quality maps from GIS data. Developed as a suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher leverages the superior graphics capabilities of this graphics design software. Avenza also offers MAPublisher 5.0 for FreeHand – a suite of Xtras that adds mapmaking functionality to Macromedia Freehand 10 and MX.

MAPublisher 7.3 for Illustrator CS2 is available free of charge to all MAPublisher for Illustrator customers with a valid maintenance subscription. Upgrades are also available, contact Red Geographics for details.

New article: using MySQL as a spatial database

hans@redgeographics.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:08:24 +0100

A new article has been uploaded to redgeographics.com: this discusses how to use MySQL as a spatial database and what the benefits are over a more traditional file-based storage.

No need to register for downloads

hans@redgeographics.com — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:04:04 +0100

As of today, it is no longer necessary to register in order to download items from the Red Geographics website. The decision to put a registration restriction on them was made in order to get a better idea of how often something was downloaded (and consequently whether it was worth the effort of developing new items).

Of course we would still like to know whether the free downloads are appreciated, so if you download something and like it, please let us know.

Currently, there is a number of FME custom transformers and custom formats available, as well as a collection of map symbols for Adobe Illustrator. Check out the download page for an overview.

VNS tutorial for texturing walls released

hans@redgeographics.com — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:36:18 +0100

A tutorial for recreating buildings in VNS using textured wall components is available here. This tutorial comes complete with sample data.

Inside MAPublisher newsletter

hans@redgeographics.com — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:22:07 +0100

Avenza Systems has just released the first issue of the Inside MAPublisher newsletter, a collection of tips and tricks straight from the development team.

MAPublisher 7.2 released

hans@redgeographics.com — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:47:34 +0100

Avenza has just announced the immediate availability of MAPublisher 7.2 for Illustrator. This is an update adressing many of the feature requests made by users of version 7.1

New in MAPublisher 7.2 are:

Enhanced MAP Indexing:

Cell entries for a feature are now alphabetized and on a single line.
Entries which fall directly on a grid line are not omitted.

Enhanced Image Registration:

Linked images within non-standard document sizes are now supported.
Linked GeoTiff images are now supported.
Images with TAB reference files and rubber sheeting information are now supported.

Enhanced Grids and Graticules

Functionality has been added to allow for the omission of grid/graticule labels in the first and last rows and columns.
Results from edits to a character style which have been applied to a grid/graticule now immediately reflected in the grid/graticule.

Various other user interface enhancements and performance improvements to improve usability.

MAPublisher 7.2 is available free of charge to all MAPublisher for Illustrator customers with a valid maintenance subscription. Updates from previous versions are also possible, contact Red Geographics or Avenza for details.

AHN custom format for FME released

hans@redgeographics.com — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:25:59 +0100

Red Geographics has released a custom format for FME that can be used to read ascii files of the AHN data. AHN (Actueel Hoogtemodel Nederland) is an elevation dataset for The Netherlands. More information on AHN can be found here, the custom format can be downloaded here.

Software now available through Red Geographics.

hans@redgeographics.com — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:00:00 +0100

Red Geographics is pleased to announce it has struck a number of reseller-deals with various software companies in the GIS- and cartography field. As a result of these deals, Red Geographics is now offering software, geodata and a wider range of services, effective immediately.

Products now available through Red Geographics include:

MAPublisher and Geographic Imager, by Avenza Systems

FME, by Safe Software

World Construction Set and Visual Nature Studio, by 3D Nature

Label-EZ, by MapText

Geographic Transformer, Geographic Translator and Geographic Calculator by Blue Marble Geographics.

In addition to software, a number of geographic datasets are also being offered, including Avenza's MapDataUSA and MapDataWorld, as well as 3D Nature's Ultimate Earth.

The range of services offered by Red Geographics has now been expanded to annual maintenance contracts for MAPublisher, Geographic Imager, Label-EZ and FME.

Please visit redgeographics.com for more information on these products.

2 years in business

hans@redgeographics.com — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 07:50:00 +0100

Today, September 1st 2006, marks the 2nd anniversary of Red Geographics. We would like to thank our clients and suppliers for their support in the past 2 years and are looking forward to doing more business in the future.

Safe Software Announces FME 2006 GB

hans@redgeographics.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:08:29 +0100

Safe Software Inc.- the world’s leading provider of spatial data translation and data transformation solutions - today announced the release of FME® 2006 GB, the latest version of the company’s Feature Manipulation Engine technology. Among the hundreds of user-requested enhancements included in this release, FME 2006 GB offers important customization options to enhance security, increase work efficiency, and assist with processing ever-increasing data volumes.

European Basemap for Manifold

hans@redgeographics.com — Sat, 27 May 2006 04:28:24 +0100

Sparked by the latest release of Manifold GIS and a posting on the georeference forum, Red Geographics is offering this European Basemap for Manifold, using the Google Maps dynamic link option that was introduced with version 7. This basemap includes country boundaries, roads and railways, hydrography, built-up areas and airports for Europe (minus the former USSR).

Known limitations are:

The free data that is available for Europe is not of very high quality in terms of accuracy (both geography and attributes)

The basemap can be downloaded here (17 Mb)

-- edit --

The streetmaps issue has now been resolved and the basemap that's for download has been updated.

Petition to save Freehand

hans@redgeographics.com — Tue, 23 May 2006 18:25:58 +0100

There is a petition to save Freehand over on http://www.enrichdesign.com/freehand.html. Please take a moment to sign it.

It doesn't seem likely that Adobe will stop selling Freehand and there will probabely be support for it in the near future, but the chances of there ever being any updates or new versions are very slim. While I am more an Illustrator user, I appreciate the benefit of choice. Also, a lot of people have gathered a lot of experience in using Freehand and for them, switching to something else isn't going to be easy.

Going through some redesign

hans@redgeographics.com — Tue, 23 May 2006 04:13:11 +0100

We're going through some redesign at the moment, meant to bring one single look to this site, redgeographics.com and map-server.com. This might cause some glitches during the modifying and uploading of new pages, our apologies for any inconvenience.

-- edit --

Looks like everything went smoothly and we are now sporting a new design.

KML exporter for World Construction Set and Visual Nature Studio

hans@redgeographics.com — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:40:10 +0100

3D Nature has released a new version of their Scene Express add-on for World Construction Set and Visual Nature Studio (see announcement here). Through this new version, a WCS or VNS scene can now be exported to KML/KMZ for visualisation in Google Earth.

Some sample output of this exporter can be found here.

Europe map data now in Google Maps

hans@redgeographics.com — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:19:15 +0100

It's official, Google has just released the map data for most of Europe in Google Maps. Together with some very sizeable satellite data updates (including most of Germany at high resolution), this will be a very important step forward for free/accessible geodata in Europe and a big boost for all the Google Maps mashups that focus on Europe.

The following countries are part of this update:

Norway
Sweden
Finland
Denmark
The Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
Germany
Poland
Switzerland
Austria
Liechtenstein
Italy
France
Spain
Portugal
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Hungary
Andorra
Monaco
San Marino
Vatican City

There is partial information for Greece (Athens and surroundings), Turkey (Istanbul and surroundings) and Russia (Moscow and surroundings), as well as major road corridors leading there, through Serbia and Belarus. Data for the UK and Ireland was already available.

A quick check shows that for all these areas, the data is complete.

Clipping features in FME using Google Earth

hans@redgeographics.com — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:34:35 +0100

Red Geographics has just released the KMLClipper, an FME Custom Transformer that can be used to clip features using areas digitized in Google Earth.

The areas digitized in Google Earth can be used as the input for a special version of the Clipper. This will then perform a clip operation on your input data:

And you will end up with the data being clipped according to the polygons digitized in Google Earth.

Please note that in order to use this custom transformer, you will need a recent version of FME that supports KML input and custom transformers. You will also need Google Earth Plus or Pro in order to be able to write KML files.

Media exposure

hans@redgeographics.com — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:14:22 +0100

There has been some media exposure for Red Geographics and its owner Hans van der Maarel recently. First of all there is the review of Geographic Imager over on Gisuser.com. Geographic Imager is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, produced by Avenza.

Geographic Imager allows you to transform and mosaick georeferenced raster images right within Photoshop and will also help you georeference them:

A bit further back in time we saw the release of Google Maps Hacks by O'Reilly. This covers a lot of interesting subjects with regards to Google Maps hacks or mash-ups, written by the same people who did Mapping Hacks. One of the hacks in the book has been contributed by Red Geographics, it's a combination of the first two tutorials that are available on map-server.com

Petition for public access to geographic data

hans@redgeographics.com — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 18:04:14 +0100

There's a petition online to oppose the recent INSPIRE directive, which stipulates that Geographic Data collected by National Mapping Agencies all over Europe should be owned by such agencies and not by the Public. High cost of geographic data for the public and for businesses means less services and less jobs in Europe.

Please go here and sign the petition. This could help bring free/affordable geodata closer to the people in Europe, which in turn can spark a lot of interesting new developments.