From an email I received yesterday

Intergraph is pleased to announce the availability of the new Security, Government & Infrastructure User Forum website.  We encourage you to utilize the forum website as a means of exchanging information with your peers.

Access to the Security, Government & Infrastructure User Forum website is available from any of the product support web pages or via the direct link below:

URL: http://userforums.intergraph.com/support/
Login: Same as your Siebel username and password.

Instructions for using the forum are available from the “Help & Guidelines” link on the User Forum page. Likewise, if you have any questions or feedback regarding the forums please send an email via the “Contact Us” tab.

Thank you,
The Intergraph® Customer Support Team

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.

For a change of pace, I was working with GeoMedia Pro a little today. I was looking to use the REPLACE functional attribute that was introduced in 6.1.6 and had a few questions. So I went into the trusty help looking for the usage, and WOW, things have changed! The initial help appears to be much more organized and logically laid out. For instance, I receive a full description of the functional attribute. Below that each element of the functional attribute is VERY well explained. No more having to hunt and peck through the help just to understand the different elements of the functional attribute…very cool! But now for the best part – the examples. The examples actually push you off to the Intergraph Knowledge Base. Although the information appears to be a part of the Intergraph Knowledge Base that I’ve known about for a long time (and incidentally, that you need to login to access), the link in the help doesn’t require you to login.

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.

Sorry, a bit late on the update. Intergraph released GeoMedia Minor Release 6.1.6 in the middle of last month. I posted it on the GeoMedia Wiki, but didn’t get a chance to post it on the blog. On a side note, if you subscribe to the GeoMedia Wiki “Product Announcements and Software Updates” page on the wiki, you’ll receive an email whenever that page is updated. So when a product announcement is posted e.g. the release of a minor release, you should receive notification via email.

Fast Note by Jeff Hobbs: The functionality that Adam describes below was has been in the product for some time. Maybe as far back as 6.0. I just wanted to make sure the readers all understand that you do NOT need to upgrade to 6.1.6 to use this functionality.

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.

As many of you know, the annual Intergraph user’s conference is happening this week. Although I’m not there, Joe Francica from Directions Magazine is covering the conference via Twitter – #Intergraph09. Not sure how much he’ll be posting, but did want to pass out the link. I do find it interesting that Joe’s the only person thus far covering the Intergraph 2009 conference on Twitter. I recently attended the Where 2.0 conference and at the conference Twitter – #Where20 was used dramatically.

Read an interesting article on GISCafe discussing Intergraph’s new product named “GeoMedia SDI Pro”. If you have a few minutes, it’s worth the read.

A little more than a year ago, I did a project for a left leaning political organization that had an interest in developing an automated means to create (and recreate) a national layer of election precincts to support activities like political canvasing.  Click here for a more complete case study on my company’s website.

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.

Thanks to Jeff for letting me participate in the Geomedia community in this way.  I asked Jeff if I can do this for the simple reason that I feel pretty strongly that Geomedia technology is really the best desktop GIS currently on the market.  Geomedia’s primary drawback, however,  is that it is undersupported in my corner of the world (The San Francisco Bay Area), and it is therefore hard to justify as a viable solution for organizations that require rock-solid support.  My participation here is my attempt to be a part of the solution to this travesty.

In case you are interested, here are a few highlights on my career:
-graduated from Humboldt State University in Geography, 1997
-spent a few years attempting rockstardom as a bass player in various touring bands
-finally decided to get a real job at San Mateo County in late 2000, helping to implement their Enterprise GIS (remember that term?)
-held increasingly responsible positions there until late 2006 when I moved to Farallon Geographics (a geospatial consulting firm in San Francisco)
-My current official title is “Geospatial Systems Analyst”, but basically I do projects to help clients of all sorts (but mostly local government) solve business problems using spatial data and related software tools.  I’m a problem solver.

As far as GIS technology goes, Geomedia is my first love. Unlike most GIS Geeks, I learned with it, and feel most comfortable and at home when developing workflows with it rather than the “other” guys.  It was my knowledge of Geomedia that got me a gig with San Mateo County back in the day.  Becuase of the County’s commitment to Geomedia, I have inevitably been exposed to various offshoots such as Grid, Transportation Manager, the Geomedia-Hansen Interface, and AFM.  From a technical perspective, what makes Geomedia exceptional are twofold:  1. The concept of pipe technology – dynamic queries upon queries, and 2. functional attributes.   In my opinion, no other GIS software has anything that touches it.

Partly as a result of the Geomedia approach to GIS, I have also become very fluent in relational database, and spatial sql language.  I have tons of experience with Oracle Spatial and Postgis, and I am now ramping up my fluency with the new Sql Server geometric (and geographic) data type.  Other interests are FME, open source GIS, particularly geoserver, qgis, udig.  Lastly, I have been forced to ramp up in ESRI technologies (mostly desktop and the former SDE stuff) to keep myself employable, so I am able to talk that talk as well.  Hopefully, I am a well-rounded GIS practicioner.

Bottom line is that I am here to help, both in terms of providing answers and in facilitating conversation among the Geomedia community.  Please dont be shy about contacting me through this forum.

Cheers,
Adam

I’m pleased to announce that Adam Lodge of Farallon Geographics has asked to be an author on the blog. Needless to say, I accepted his offer!

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!

If you want to make enemies, try to change something

-Woodrow Wilson