By Glenn Letham, November 27, 2003

About Accuglobe

(GISuser feature) The AccuGlobe 2004 software product series was created to be a flexible and extensible base for the GIS community. This scalable software is the core engine behind many of DDTI’s advanced spatial software products. The casual user, with limited GIS knowledge and expertise in GIS, can use a freely downloadable version in developing, editing, and viewing GIS data. The GIS professional can develop plug-ins that are more complex and sophisticated with the AccuGlobe software development kit which is expected to be "coming soon". Additionally, users can use an SDK develop unique, customized application plug-ins.

Free Download

Accessing the free download is quick and painless. Users must first register online, providing a valid email address and establish a username/password pair. Almost immediately you will then be sent a confirmation email along with a hyperlink to where you can now access the download. I elected to download the software (11 MB) as well as the sample data (13 MB). Once I downloaded the data the install was very quick and simple.

Starting the Accuglobe program results in a prompt to open either a new blank project, start adding existing data, or open an existing project (.epf file). Since I had gone to the extra effort of grabbing the sample data (always a good idea), I selected that option. The data provided was for Cedar Point, Ohio and included the following data: orthophotos, road centerlines, addresses, and speed limits.

Cedar Point demo data

My next mission was to quickly browse the menus to determine what I could and couldn't do. The obvious tasks were available; pan, zoom, zoom to previous view, print, hyperlink, create a chart, measure, identify (pretty good selection for freeware!) Looking a bit deeper, I then inspected the options under the menu bar. Selecting Save As enables saving the workspace as a new epf file. Exporting enables me to save the display as a BMP, while the Add Data (aka Import) option provides me with the ability to add a number of data formats including: SHP, TAB, BIL, LAN, GIF, JPG, SID... many of the commonly used vector and raster data types.

Changing the data display options is very simple. Double-Click on the data layer name (left side-bar) and a familiar display theme option menu appears. Numerous display option can then be changed including: pen, fill, symboil, and theming styles.

Color display options

Other cool options and analytical features available to users include: Select features by point, rectangle, cirlce, polygon; Buffer; import X,Y file; copy Identify results to clipboard

Finally, I wanted to test out the Add data capabilities by importing some data. I elected to bring in some MIF data. I pointed to a Canada .MIF dataset which quickly came up in my display. All dta layers appear to have come in along with the data attributes. To test I did a quick identify on a polygon, resulting in a display of the complete attribute list. Note: I could have easily done this with a SHP file as well.

MIF data imports nicely

My Opinion... Overall, this appears to be a very useful tool, and particularly attractive as a free, lightweight GIS for the novice user. Add to that the ability for developers and programers to dable with the SDK, additional plug-ins and extensions and you have a very slick new product that the skilled user may wish to take for a test drive. According to the company, the SDK will be coming soon and this is what makes the product very powerful. Expect the SDK to include the complete AltaMap Desktop SDK, so AccuGlobe then becomes a highly customizable and extendible GIS platform.

More Info

MINIMUM INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS

• Internet Explorer v. 5.0
• Windows 98, ME, NT4 (Service Pack 6 & IE6), 2000 (Service Pack 2+), XP, 2003
• 64 MB RAM
• Intel Pentium-class processor
• 50 MB of hard-disk space (for full installation of AccuGlobe 2004 AND Dataset)
• 800x600 Screen Resolution

Features

• Online updates to the program
• Standard GIS functions such as pan, zoom and identify.
• Thematic mapping using interval and value themes.
• Feature labeling using label themes.
• Printing and plotting layout designer.
• Powerful charting wizard.
• Map legend allowing full control over layer order and symbolization.
• Basic geometry and attribute editing capability (Requires the Basic Editor plug-in, also included).
• Attribute query builder.
• User defined map annotations, both text and shapes.
• Hyperlink other documents to map features.
• Supports Shapefile and MapInfo® tables vector file formats.
• Supports MrSID®, TIF and JPG raster file formats.
• Powerful buffering tools.
• GPS (Requires the GPS plug-in)

AccuGlobe 2004 plug-ins

• Basic Editor, included with AccuGlobe 2004 (source code available with SDK).
• GPS (available soon).
• Projection plug-in that will convert data from Latitude/Longitude to U.S. State Plane and vice versa (available soon).

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