Monday, June 30, 2008

MapInfo 9.5 Update

Downloaded and installed the evaluation version. I also downloaded and installed MapCad. Workspaces are still there, so that alone is enough to turn me off. There is some handy right-click context menu functionality in the map browser. Especially for editing. The interface looks essentially the same, and I can't see if they changed anything. On the one hand this is nice, because everything looks the same and makes it easy to learn from one version to the next (can't say this about Autodesk).

I tried to use the MapCad tools but, honestly, couldn't find how to load them. I ran the installer, twice, but nothing happened. I looked in the helpfile for MapCad and it said to go to the Help dropdown and go to MapCad Help. This, of course, did not exist. So again I ask the question, why spend over a 1000$ when you can get the same functionality out of Manifold (plus both the extensions for that amount)? It will supposedly also work with MSSQL 2008 spatial as well.

I didn't bother playing with the .NET features...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

To load MapCad after installing, go to Tools/Tool Manager and choose MapCad.

Installed Tools are not default enabled in MapInfo so you will find many more in the Tool Manager.

David S. Lamb said...

Tried that, but it wasn't there...Strange. Must have done something wrong with the install. How are the MapCad tools?

Anonymous said...

MapCAD installed to C:\Program Files\AGIS\MapCAD on my computer. Found it by searching the C: drive for "mapcad." Then I followed what Emil suggested and navigated to that folder to pick up the .mbx file instead of the default tools folder. What I noticed when I installed MapCAD is it creates two toolbars, one for new MapCAD functions, and one for the built-in Objects menu in MapInfo. I suppose if you are more of a toolbar button person this is better, but I don't mind using the Objects menu. The two things I've been using most often from the MapCAD tools are the "Calculate Angle" and "Calculate Direction" functions. These come in handy because I work with parcel maps daily and am constantly trying to improve them.

Anonymous said...

Mapinfo MapCAD tools are not included in the eval. version - see the fine, fine print.

David S. Lamb said...

I downloaded an evaluation of 9.5 and MapCAD seperately later (see this post http://boxshapedworldgis.blogspot.com/2008/10/mapinfo-mapcad-95.html) and it worked fine.