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I’ve checked this out a few times, but haven’t had a chance to dig in much. Looks promising and it’s definitely a good sign from Intergraph.

When I clicked on the “REPLACE Example” link in the help, I was brought to a page with a whole host of examples. Here’s a copy and paste from the EXAMPLES sections:

Abstract

The following example shows how to use the REPLACE functional attribute.  This applies to GeoMedia products version 6.1.6 and later.

Code Example

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”) equals THIS IS EXAMPLE TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”, 6) equals THIS-IS EXAMPLE TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”, 1, 2) equals THIS-IS EXAMPLE-TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “I%-”, “ ”, 1, 0, TRUE()) equals THIS IS EXAMPLE-TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “i%-”, “ ”, 1, 0, TRUE()) equals THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT

Very cool!

A couple of notes:

1. Since the examples are written on a web page, it’s likely you won’t be able to just copy the example and paste it into the Functional Attributes dialog. You’ll instead need to first paste it into Notepad or some other text editor and clean-up the example. So, if you find your example not working correctly in GeoMedia, make sure to clean it up first.
2. When I logged into the Intergraph knowledge base directly (as opposed to accessing it through the help), initially I wasn’t able to find the same knowledge base entry. If you’re going to search the knowledge base directly, make sure to choose “(All GeoMedia Products)” under the “Product” section. I chose “GeoMedia and GeoMedia Professional” and didn’t get any records returned. As soon as I chose “(All GeoMedia Products)”, the same knowledge base entry I found in the help was also available in the Knowledge Base result set.

The folks at Intergraph recently introduced a new search tool in GeoMedia that brings my ability to develop data maintenance workflows of this sort to a new level.  It is often the case that the most difficult part of a data maintenance or integration workflow is not in linking the records after you find the right place on the map, or in digitizing the geometry, but in actually searching and/or panning and zooming the map to where it needs to be to allow entry of the new spatial data record.

Here is an example… I have a spreadsheet that I acquired from the local power company that specifies locations (in non-standard English descriptions) for every light pole in my client’s city.  All that my client wants to do is create a GIS point feature that is attributed with the unique ID for each light pole from the spreadsheet and inherit the other attributes from the spreadsheet.  It is easy to digitize a point for each pole once you know where to put it.  The difficult part of the workflow is to turn this English descriptive location into a meaningful location on the map  for each record.

In the old paradigm, I would use the attribute query tool to predefine a SQL statement in which someone can search for a parcel or a street to help the person doing the data entry find the location of interest.  This was difficult for the user because in order to find anything at all, the user cannot do anything to the SQL that would mess it up – like forget to put the closing apostrophe at the end of the statement if it is a text field.  However, with the new search tool, (available in version 6.01.06.19), I can predefine a search, pin wildcards to each side of the user-input search term, and GeoMedia will provide an input box for the user to enter the search string.  The result is that it is easy for a person completely unversed in SQL to reliably execute a search query in GeoMedia against an available table or feature class.

This may seem pedestrian to GIS veterans, but I really think that this is a huge leap forward in the usability of GeoMedia workflows for folks less versed in database.  And let’s face it – it means that us GIS veterans have to do less of the drudgery of data creation.  So… create those workflows, pass them off to the interns, and go have yourself some shrimp cocktail.

For more details on exactly how to use the search tool, open up GeoMedia , go to Help –> GeoMedia Help Topics, and type ‘search’ on the index tab.

One of the basic challenges in this project was to find an efficient way to split hundreds of thousands of polygons (census blocks) using a separate, and rather large layer of line geometry – in this case, statewide commercial street data.  Although I had the option to do this work with custom code in Oracle Spatial, I wanted to use Geomedia in order to avoid the Oracle customization time sink.  How to do it in Geomedia?  The solution is easy, but not at all obvious (at least to me).  Here is the recipe I came up with:

1. Load the feature class that you want to split (in my case, census blocks), and the features that you want to split by (in my case, streets). Also, and this is important, make sure that the “Display Properties Dialog for New Features” button is unpressed.

2. Select the census blocks and initiate the split tool in Geomedia.  Notice that a new toolbar appears with four buttons on it… split by point, split by line, split by polygon, and split by selected features.  Click on “split by selected features”.

3. Turn OFF locatability on the census blocks layer (the layer to be split).  Be sure to do this without unselecting those features.

4. Turn on locatability for the streets layer, and select the features that you want to use as a basis for splitting census blocks.

5. Double-click somewhere – anywhere – on the map window and let Geomedia do its thing.  Depending on the complexity of the features that it is analyzing and the sheer number of records, it may take a little time to complete.  If you didnt take my advice from step one and ignored the “Display Properties Dialog for New Features” button, then it might force you to click OK for every newly split feature.

The result in my case is census blocks seemlessly split based on a seperate layer of line work.  Perfect geometry, perfect topology between features, with no slivers or gaps… a thing of beauty.

I first met Adam when he was with San Mateo County, CA and I was working with the City of San Jose. While I was with Intergraph, Adam served as the president of the Northern California Intergraph Geospatial User’s Community. Adam has been working with GeoMedia for many years (maybe even longer than me) and has a ton of knowledge about both Intergraph products like GeoMedia, GeoMedia Parcel Manager, GeoMedia Grid, and GeoMedia/Hansen interface. Additionally, he has a lot of experience with open source products like Geoserver, OpenLayers, and PostGIS. Finally, he’s been working with Oracle Locator/Spatial for a number of years.

I’ll let Adam tell you more in his own words. But needless to say, I’m very happy to have someone else post on the blog. If anybody else is interested in contributing to the blog, please email me and we’ll add you as well!

• Read a GeoMedia/GM Pro workspace
• Connect to Oracle Spatial and SQL Server
• Have the same look and feel as GeoMedia and GeoMedia Pro
• Free

You’re definitely in luck. I’d encourage you to download it and give it a try. Please note that if you’re going to install GeoMedia Viewer on a machine already running GeoMedia and/or GeoMedia Pro, I believe Intergraph recommends you install the least functional piece of software first. In other words, if you’re going to run (not sure why you would want to) GeoMedia, GeoMedia Viewer, and GeoMedia Pro all on the same machine, you’d want to first install GeoMedia Viewer, then install GeoMedia Std, and finally install GeoMedia Pro. If you don’t follow this pattern, you might find that some of your functionality is lost.

From the GeoMedia Viewer site:

GeoMedia Viewer is an easy to use, FREE GIS software application for desktop viewing and distribution of geospatial data. It allows an organization to maximize the value of its geospatial data by extending availability to novice users who wouldn’t otherwise have access because of the barriers of purchasing and learning how to use a full GIS software application.

Anyhow, I’ve been playing a little with the Analysis > Analyze Geometry command. I can’t say I use it all the time, so I’m not sure when this changed. It may have been a long time ago. I’ve always found it hard to get lat/long coordinates from my state plane coordinates. Yes, I can do this one off by just clicking on the map and getting a coordinate readout from the “Precision Coordinates” dialog, but what if I wanted to have lat/long for 10,000 points. That was much harder.

You can do this with functional attributes. In fact, I posted an article on www.geomediawiki.org on how to do it. It was actually copied for the most part out of the GeoMedia online help. However you can also do this with the Analyze Geometry command.

1. Launch the command (Analysis > Analyze Geometry)
2. Choose a point feature class. If you have lines or polygons, use the CENTERPOINT functional attribute to create points from the line/area geometry.
3. When you select the point feature class, you will see the “Analysis Options” dialog populate. In the dialog you will see “Geographic Coordinate” and “Projection Coordinate”
   
4. If you check “Geographic” you will get lat/long. If you check “Projection” you’ll typically get easting/northing. NOTE: you can set the output coordinate format in the “Units and Formats…” dialog in the same Analyze Geometry dialog.
5. For points you have options for Azimuth, Bearing, Geographic Coordinates, Projection Coordinates, and Height. Height assumes you have the Z elevation populated in your geometry
6. If you work with lines, you’ll have options for Length, Azimuth, and Bearing
7. If you work with areas, you’ll have options for Area, Perimeter, and Area/Perimeter ^2

All in all, this is much easier than having to write a functional attribute.

[RANT]On a complete side note…IF Intergraph would NOT hide their marketing information behind a login and password, then I’d have links to the products. The last I heard, David Holmes had said that he hoped to have at least the splash pages out from login/password shortly after the end of the conference. We’re going on almost a month now…anytime soon would certainly be nice. Actually, I found what I think is a hidden link to a bit of literature on the software.[/RANT]

Anyhow, GeoMedia Fusion is a great tool for doing data cleanup, attribute validation,  and conflation. The schema remodeler utility comes with GeoMedia Fusion and is a stand alone utility that provides you with the ability to migrate data from one source to another and to bulk export from the GeoMedia environment. For those that have heard of Intergraph’s Data Warehousing Tools, the schema remodeler utility is the re-branded (and enhanced) Data Warehousing Tools. Schema Remodeler is one of my favorite Intergraph tools and I almost always use it at least once a week.. As of late I’ve set it up to take my Trimble GPS text files and load them into my Oracle Locator database. In the schema remodeler utility, you can do a number of things including re-mapping and reordering columns from one source to another (think migrating a database from Access to Oracle or SQL Server); exporting a seamless Access feature class into a gridded Bentley Microstation V7 environment; and updating columns using functional attributes, creating a subset of the the data using temporal and attribute queries, and modifying the source geometry using an analytical merge so you can export the Oracle data to create a shapefile (all in one transaction).

When you look at the functionality of Schema Remodeler, it’s really pretty amazing at how much you can do with the utility. Now, how do I compare it to FME? It’s hard to say as I’ve used Schema Remodeler off and on for the last five years and I’ve only use FME a handful of times. In my eyes, they both attempt to do similar things. The biggest difference in my eyes has to do with the number of file formats supported (Schema Remodeler only supports the standard GM data server while FME supports at least 150 different GIS data types) and how detailed you need to get. Schema Remodeler is great for many things, however it’s only a utility. FME on the other hand is a complete software solution. Its so goal is “spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load”. It should also be mentioned that since you can’t buy Schema Remodeler by itself (it only comes with GeoMedia Fusion), FME is actually quite a bit cheaper than Schema Remodeler. So, if you’re looking exclusively for “spatial ETL” functionality, I personally would go with FME. However if you need to do some pretty advanced conflation, a lot of automated data cleanup, and attribute validation, you really should be looking at GeoMedia Fusion. If you do that, it’s really nice to know that Schema Remodeler comes as part of Fusion and may answer many of your ETL needs.

1) CSF2ASCII.exe – This tool will read any .csf file and write out the contents (projection information out to a a ASCII text file or an HTML file. This is also available in the download widget on the left hand side of the screen.

2) Database Inventory – This will analyze any warehouse connection and provide a complete list of the GeoMedia objects that are available in the connection. I found this one a bit hard to use…but it could definitely be useful if you needed to get a better feel for the contents of a new connection…especially a database. Great for documentation and learning. This too can be downloaded from the widget on the left hand side of the screen.