New Features in 2008 Version

SuperMap GIS 2008 Desktop products pay more attention to usability and reliability. Improvements and enhancements in data engine, data management, data representation, data editing, spatial analysis as well as UI optimization have been made in the 2008 release.

Data Engine and Data Management

　　◆Enhanced operations on attribute table structure. Adding a new field becomes faster and more convenient, while batch deleting fields is available.

　　◆New filtering function for dataset display. This allows for only specified dataset been displayed in workspace manager.

　　◆Support for reversed selection in multiple windows (workspace manager window, attribute window and map window etc.) for fast window manipulation.

　　◆New polar projection and projection for Hong Kong. Support for on-the-fly geographical transformation among different datum.

　　◆New web data source. Direct access to WMS, WFS, WCS services of OGC and support KML format of Google Earth.

　　◆New projection transformation of vector dataset.


Map Display

　　◆New anti-alias function to smooth map representation. Anti-alias can be applied to line style, text, symbol and thematic map. Its visual effects can be saved to the map or the workspace without affecting the source data. The following two figures illustrate anti-alias effect of lines, the left one with anti-alias disabled and the right one with anti-alias enabled.

Figure 16 Anti-alias effect

　　◆New function of Saving map as template, which saves style setting and thematic map setting etc. for further use.

　　◆New user-defined display area, in which only specific regions can be shown on Map Window while other regions will be hidden.

　　◆New map cache. A series of pictures are generated in the cache according to current map display setting and cache size. Faster map display is achieved by direct access to the cached image without accessing the original one.

　　◆Enhanced thematic map function. Filters for all kinds of thematic maps are available, and thematic map can be created for specified features. You can process over length text, set the background for text as well as the ways text is located along the line and so on in label thematic map.

　　◆Improved color editor making color editing more convenient.

Data Editing and Processing

　　◆Enhanced accuracy and easy-to-use object drawing; the object can be drawn according to the information of object control points. For example, a circle can either be drawn by inputting coordinates of points that form the circle or by setting a radius.

Figure 17 Precise object drawing

　　◆New automatic raster vectorization and raster data can be converted to points, lines or regions automatically, which greatly reduces GIS data capturing workload. Comparison of raster contour and vector contour after automatic vectorization is illustrated below:

Figure 18 Raster contour (left) and vector contour (right) in comparison.

　　◆New 24 topological rules for checking topological errors in GIS vector data.

　　◆Enhanced topological process for line dataset.

　　◆Improved map clip, and united settings for all layers involved in clipping process.

　　◆Support for simultaneous resampling of datasets in different datasources.

　　◆Support for creating field index for the sub dataset of network dataset.

　　◆Set smoothing parameters when performing smoothing process on line dataset.

　　◆Enhanced dataset fusion.

　　◆Enhanced row and column appending for a dataset.

　　◆New real-time check and warn for input errors. Real-time warning appears if a wrong value is input.

　　◆Support for shortcut operations for list boxes in all dialogue boxes, including Ctrl+A key to select all, Insert key to insert a item, and Shift/Ctrl key to select multiple objects etc.

3D Visualization

　　◆TIN and DEM can be generated by using multi-point and line datasets.

　　◆Enhanced 3D pre-process of massive data.

Layout

　　◆Flexible inserting support of attribute table into layout.

　　◆Enhanced legend for layout.

Spatial Analysis

　　◆Enhanced buffer analysis with improved UI usability and support for buffer analysis based on multiple conditions and buffer can be created for both single object and the dataset.

　　◆New dynamic segmentation. Route dataset can be created by road points and routes, where partial route data can be rectified and point or linear events can be geographically positioned.

　　◆New tracking analysis for facility pipes and water network. Downstream and upstream can be searched, origin of a point and joint point can be located. Also, tracking analysis can be performed across map sheets.

　　◆New logistics & distribution function.

　　◆Improved presentation of network analysis result, for example, driven guides can be output for route analysis, closest facilities search etc.

　　◆End point of analysis can be specified in optimal path analysis.

　　◆New dynamic update of arc weight and node weight.

　　◆ New turn table dataset creating support from network dataset.

　　◆ Profile can be exported to .bmp format, image dataset or attribute dataset.

　　◆Improved reclassification of raster dataset.

　　◆Enhanced mosaic function of raster dataset.

　　◆Improved zonal statistics for raster dataset.

User Interface Optimization

　　◆Randomly changed rendering styles for simple datasets when opening.

　　◆Option for disabling Splash screen.

Improved UI usability for analysis and query. For example, the interface of thematic map creation wizard integrates with the example images for various thematic maps to give an impression of all types of thematic map, and the descriptions for each type of thematic map are also given.