Dotted Eyes News

We’re delighted to announce that Dotted Eyes is again co-hosting the free UK FME User Group. It will be held on 29th April 2010, at Ordnance Survey’s offices in Southampton.

Don Murray, Co-Founder of Safe Software, who was described as ‘fantastic, approachable and enthusiastic’ will be joining us once again to give a lively overview of FME 2010.

Over 100 attendees joined us in 2009, and all of them rated the event as being excellent or very good in terms of usefulness. The event is suited to existing users, and those who want to find out more about FME before purchasing.

This year, the event is flanked by optional training on FME Desktop (£800 ex VAT for 2 days)  and FME Server (£400 ex VAT for 1 day).

To find out more view the invitation. Registration is available online.

We hope to see you there!

PGA members are invited to attend a free workshop run by Dotted Eyes with Landmark Information Group. The session will focus on the use of geographic boundaries for spatial analysis, including MarkerMap REGIONS as supplied to PGA members. The workshop will run from 10:30 to 14:00 on Thursday 26th November at our offices in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. Refreshments and lunch are provided. To sign-up click here or email duncan.hill@dottedeyes.com for more information.

Liverpool Direct, the joint venture company formed by Liverpool City Council and BT, is one of the first customers to sign up for Contractor Portal, the web application for local government organisations that simplifies the distribution of Ordnanace Survey and other datasets to their contractors.

Brian Jones, Geodata Team Manager at Liverpool Direct, said: “Whenever a contractor has to use Ordnance Survey mapping they need to apply for a licence. That requires the contracting body to source and exchange the data and manage the licence application.

“Contractor Portal completely automates that process as it enables the contractor to self-serve.

“We anticipate considerable efficiency savings being generated from this avoidance of contact with contractors. The lighter touch minimises the amount of resource required from my team, freeing us up to do a lot more of our business critical, internally driven GIS work.

“On top of that we will be supplying a much more reliable service that can turn round requests a lot more quickly than before.”

For more information, register for our webinar on 25th September at 10AM or telephone us on 01527 556920.

Those of you out there who have ever been fortunate enough to attend a seminar or conference hosted by Don Murray or Dale Lutz of Safe Software will have some idea of the show that they put on. The 2009 FME International User Conference hosted at Whistler in British Columbia was absolutely no exception…it was informative, cutting edge and above all, great fun!

FME users from around the world gathered at the FME International User Conference from June 11-12, 2009 in Whistler, BC for an interactive and intimate opportunity to explore the theme “Bringing the World Together”. This year’s program provided conference attendees with a valuable opportunity to build their spatial ETL expertise, gain new insights into solving complex spatial data challenges and network with other industry professionals. A packed programme was available to attend which included pre-conference training sessions, 28 technical sessions, 4 hands on workshops, the quick fire ‘lightning talk’ presentations (I was delighted to present one on FME and Unifying the Spatial Environment, featuring access to GIS data from CAD via FDO, access to CAD data from MapInfo and, of course, FME Server) and opportunities to network at the lunch time ‘birds of a feather’ tables. If you had a troublesome task to complete with your data but couldn’t solve it on your own you even had the opportunity to pay a visit to the Safe Software Doctors Office where specialist consultants suitably attired in white gowns with stethoscopes at the ready were available to carry out surgery on your FME Workspaces!

Over 20 countries were represented by more than 110 delegates who all wanted to find out what is new in FME but more importantly seek out new innovative ideas for dealing with their data from examples demonstrated by their contemporaries. Networking is always a big part of Safe’s conference as it provides a unique opportunity to share ideas, successes, lessons learned and best practices. Given Safe’s unique place in the market you also get direct access to personnel from many Safe’s partners, some of the industries software vendors such as Autodesk, Pitney Bowes Business Insight, Oracle, ESRI, Intergraph, Informatica, Microsoft, IBM, Weogeo and many more.

So, for the uninitiated, what does Safe Software actually do? Well, they smash through your data silos to facilitate the free flow of data, that’s what. Interoperability is the name of the game and Safe have been playing their trump card, FME, for some time. With FME you can break down barriers between your data and your applications, translate your data into a more usable format as well as completely transform its schema to make it more fit for purpose.

As far as what’s new in FME… well, the list is somewhat endless. Those of you who have used FME for a little while will be aware that Safe do a very good job of listening to user requests and in the latest release of FME - 2009 - this is borne out by the inclusion of over 430 user requested features as well as yet more formats supported (225+) and even more transformers. The big news about FME 2009 though is that it has 20-20 vision! In general it’s 20% faster, and in some cases up to 20 times faster. In case you’re wondering how these numbers were calculated, they’re the results of Safe’s automated test suite which is run on every new build. Comparing the speed of the 4,000+ tests on FME2008 vs FME2009 the overall speed improvement was 20%. The ones with the most improvements - some of the raster reprojection and interpolation tests - were 20 times as fast as in FME2008. If you want to try it for yourself just go to www.dottedeyes.com/tryfme to download the latest version and give it a go. Don’t expect this to be the end of the performance increases though, at the User Conference Don Murray made the bold statement that every future release of FME will be faster than the last, irrespective of hardware, so we have some exciting times ahead or at least Safe’s development team have!

If you’re interested in forthcoming features then watch out for truly generic reading and writing and dynamic feature types in FME Desktop 2010. But, if your needs scale beyond the desktop and you’re interested in the benefits that FME Server can bring to your organisation you’ll be pleased to hear that FME Server 2010 will bring security as one of its most significant features. All actions in FME Server will be made secure to include Workbench access, web access and all APIs. It’ll ship with basic security and support for JAAS Authentication, LDAP security, Active Directory, Conterra securityManager and support for HTTP Basic and Digest.

If you’d like to know more about anything mentioned here or you have any specific FME questions on a wider topic feel free to email me directly at david.eagle@dottedeyes.com or alternatively visit www.dottedeyes.com/fme for further information on FME itself. Or, you can read Directions Magazine’s review of the Conference here: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=3195

Local government data users are invited to an informal round table workshop where they can meet with other local government CAD and GIS users and managers, plus experts from Dotted Eyes and Autodesk, to openly discuss the data related challenges which face them each day, and explore potential solutions.

Whether someone is a CAD user trying to access maps or a GIS user managing spatial data, they can find out through networking and idea sharing how to benefit from the increased efficiency possible through CAD and GIS integration.

If you’re a local government data user please register online for this FREE breakfast event, to be held at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, on 25th June from 8.30 AM to 11 AM. All delegates will have free entry to the Royal Armouries immediately after the event.

For more information contact our Commercial Team on 01527 556920.

If you aren’t free that day, please contact us so we can help you evaluate your CAD strategy free of charge.

Key business benefits of linking CAD software with GIS were the focus of a seminar held by Dotted Eyes and Autodesk which officially launched a partnership between the two organisations. The event, at Dotted Eyes’ Bromsgrove office, attracted spatial data managers, business and healthcare analysts from the NHS and different tiers of local government across England. It was designed to show how CAD/GIS integration can deliver greater value through an emerging model called the Unified Spatial Environment (USE).

Among those to benefit from USE will be designers, engineers, asset and estate managers, architects and many other decision makers across the public and private sectors.

Tracey Stone, Autodesk’s Geospatial Sales Manager for Northern Europe, who presented at the seminar, said: “This was the first opportunity to showcase our partnership with Dotted Eyes and the benefits that our solutions bring to the USE. Anyone who uses spatial data with a design element has the same challenge: how to maximise their investment in this data by ensuring all those who need it have fast and easy secure access to a single, centralised source. By eliminating CAD and GIS silos, the USE model does exactly this.”

In his presentation, Benjamin Allan, Dotted Eyes Managing Director, said USE offers a seamless way to reduce overheads at a time when spatial data managers face a twin headache of growing complexity and greater customer demand.

He said: “Unifying the traditionally separate technologies of CAD and GIS will facilitate better cross-functional management of spatial data. The priorities and timetable for developing USE will be driven by customer demand. The real power will be as an enabler for greater data sharing within and beyond organisations so saving them time and money and enhancing the quality of their work.”

Mr Allan said the partnership with Autodesk was crucial to the development of USE as it will help bring much needed solutions which enable the integration of CAD and GIS to the market.

The seminar looked at a series of examples of where CAD and GIS integration is already feasible. David Eagle, Professional Services Manager at Dotted Eyes, showed how translation tools can link design software with data storage files, databases, open source tools and web services.

Neil Brooker, Autodesk Geospatial Technical Manager for Northern Europe, explained the aspects of current design visualisation tools which enable GIS professionals to style spatial data and carry out geographic analysis.

One of the key products available from Dotted Eyes under its partnership with Autodesk is AutoCAD Map 3D.

The agreement adds a further world-leading name to Dotted Eyes’ partner list of GIS and data vendors. The company is already the biggest Pitney Bowes MapInfo partner in the UK and a premier partner of Ordnance Survey.

We will be co-hosting the 2009 UK FME User Group, to be held at Ordnance Survey’s Southampton head office on April 1st 2009.

The event will build on the success of last year’s inaugural user group, when over fifty delegates heard case studies from FME users across the UK. Don Murray, Co-founder and President of Safe Software, will once again lead the sessions, having received a rapturous welcome in 2008.

Don comments, “With the great success of last year’s UK FME User Group, I’m looking forward to being part of this year’s expanded event. I always enjoy meeting our users, both learning about the great challenges they are solving and receiving feedback on the ways we can make our product even better.”

The agenda will be packed with both informative and interactive sessions, including an under the bonnet look at FME 2009 and beyond, FME best practices, tips and tricks, user case studies and an opportunity to network with other FME users.

Both existing FME users, and those interested in using FME’s market leading translation, transformation and integration capabilities, will be made most welcome by Safe, Dotted Eyes and four other participating FME partners.

This year’s user group will be preceded by two days of intensive complimentary training on FME Server, delivered by Safe Software’s own trainers. Training places are strictly limited, and delegates should apply to the Commercial Team to enquire about availability.

Visit our FME user group page to register for the user group by the 12th March 2009. If you require more information, please call our Commercial Team on 01527 556920.

This one day seminar for councils and NHS organisations, hosted by Dotted Eyes in conjunction with Autodesk, will help attendees maximise their return on investment in CAD software. Autodesk will outline a user case study on behalf of a local council, showcasing how AutoCAD Map 3D brings together design and geographic information, and Dotted Eyes will present on key issues such as configuration, optimisation of data storage and future proofing.

For more information, view the attached seminar invitation.

We are delighted that Tom Burslem from Cycle City Guides has been asked to present to the MapInfo User Group UK & Ireland (MUGUKI) on January 28th, 2009.

Cycle City Guides use GBM Mobile to create cycle maps in situ. These maps are collated back in the office using MapInfo Professional. It’s a far cry from the early days when the company’s surveyors used coloured pens and paper to create maps!

Visit Cycle City Guides’ website to view maps created by the company.

MapInfo today released an upgrade for MapInfo Professional 9.5.

9.5 users can update their software by clicking on Help > Check for Update from within MapInfo Professional.

9.5.1 is a major, yet free, patch release. It brings improved display capabilities, such as a translucency feature which allows you to see through a thematic map to the base map below. Labels can also be set at various levels of translucency and anti-aliasing can now be applied to them to smooth the text edges.

9.5.1 also addresses problems experienced when printing, especially to PDF.

Tom Probert from Pitney Bowes MapInfo is running a one hour webinar on 11th December 2008 from 10AM to introduce the new features in MapInfo Professional 9.5.1 and Vertical Mapper 3.5.

You can register online at https://mapinfoevents.webex.com/mapinfoevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=669011131

Don’t forget to check our other news items for information about MapInfo special offers in the run up to Christmas, or call our Commercial Team on 01527 556920.