16 replies to this topic

[François Goulet]

In an answer to another post this morning, I talk about Hawth's Tool for ArcGIS and I was wondering what other tool sets do you use often?

I use weekly ET Geowizard, AlaskaPak and XTools.

I just thought it would be fun to share what makes our job easier!

Manifold and MapInfo users are welcome too!

[Hans van der Maarel]

I just thought it would be fun to share what makes our job easier!

Manifold and MapInfo users are welcome too!

Not an ESRI tool, but something that I simply could not do without: FME (oh come on, everybody saw that one coming from a mile, right?). Aside from that, I've grown very fond of Global Mapper and GeoTiffExaminer. A good text editor is indispensable too, I prefer Textpad on Windows, still looking for a Mac equivalent (suggestions welcome!). Finally, for a Windows Explorer / MacOS Finder alternative: Directory Opus (Windows) and Path Finder (Mac).

[François Goulet]

Not an ESRI tool, but something that I simply could not do without: FME (oh come on, everybody saw that one coming from a mile, right?).

I can't believe I left that one out!

[peanut]

Two that I can think of right now that work well and have saved me a bunch of time are:

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources DNR Garmin application for retrieving GPS coordinates from Garmin GPS units. http://www.dnr.state.../DNRGarmin.html

Another cool app (This one runs in ArcMap) is Export to KML 2.5.3 from the City of Portland planning department.

http://arcscripts.es....asp?dbid=14273

Rich

[gregsd]

...
Manifold and MapInfo users are welcome too!

Well, as a MapInfo user there are a whole host of tools that can be downloaded for free from DirectionsMag. Another good resource for tools and tips is the site run by Jacques Paris.

[Matthew Hampton]

I have used some tools from Zonum Soutions that have been very handy.

I have found the KML2shape tool to be very handy for getting citizen-based input (digitized in Google's MyMaps) into a shapefile format so I can use it in Arc.

[Jon Morris]

A good text editor is indispensable too, I prefer Textpad on Windows, still looking for a Mac equivalent (suggestions welcome!).

I used to use Textpad a lot, until I saw UltraEdit. Textpad uses way too many non-standard keyboard shortcuts for me (in particular F8 instead of ctrl-H for replace - very annoying).

For the Mac, Textwrangler is good.

[Andrew Patterson]

In one of my early co-op jobs, I found a cracked copy of Ultra-Edit on my work machine. After using it for a few weeks, I liked it so much I shelled out US$75 for an unlimited license! Still using it today here at work. Great application.

[ELeFevre]

My favorite toolset has to be Mapublisher. Am I the only one who considers it an "toolset" or what? I use Xtools too.

[François Goulet]

My favorite toolset has to be Mapublisher. Am I the only one who considers it an "toolset" or what? I use Xtools too.

And what a tool! Couldn't do it without it!

[Unit Seven]

Ultraedit/Openoffice spreadsheet and the DOS command window are one of my most timesaving and regularly used tools. Really got to get my head around regular expressions—can do basic stuff but more complex ones take some time muddling through it.

With the combination above I often use a custom perl program/script to do a find and replace in a text file with various values from a spreadsheet to up to thousands of files. If this sounds useful to anyone let me know and I'll post up.

FME is great and so simple to throw togeather some pretty powerful stuff—use most days esp as we are often working between Arc and Microstation.

Also for Arc Hawths, ET Geowizard and NOAA ARD tools—there's a great tool which takes your current layout frame and creates a rectangle in a polygon layer with the attributes for scale and rotation of current view.

Cheers.

[frax]

Speaking of text-editors - I am very happy I invested the time in getting to know Vim, a very powerful and flexible text editor, that has found it's place in many ways in my workflow.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Speaking of text-editors - I am very happy I invested the time in getting to know Vim, a very powerful and flexible text editor, that has found it's place in many ways in my workflow.

[crosses fingers]

Linux-loving friend: "Oh come on, name one thing that VI is lacking!"
Me: "An interface?"


Textwrangler looks like it'll suit my needs just fine, thanks for the suggestion!

I also found that for some jobs, a command line is indispensable. However, the standard DOS-based command line in Windows is rather limited, so I've been using Take Command for many years (and before that, in the MS-DOS days, I used its predecessor 4DOS).

Now that I'm almost making the move to a predominantly Mac environment (my Windows workstation is in a slow death spiral right now, will be replacing it with a Mac Pro and only run Windows for the apps that really need it), I guess I'll have to get myself more acquainted with AppleScript and the terminal...

[CHART]

I consider pretty well everything on my Laptop as tools. Tools = things that help me make a living.
If you don't mind I used Francois's question to make an inventory of what I actually have and use and posted it for your perusal.

I would not want to bore all the non MapInfo-VerticalMapper users on Cartotalk with all the great MapBasic utilities. I switch to MapInfo in 1996 and never looked back... at what ESRI did beyond my old but still used ArcCad and ArcView 3.3.

Office software .... Nothing MicroSoft.
OpenOffice.
Thunderbird and Lightning. (it was easy to switch from Outlook...)
FireFox.

AVG and an old free version of Sygate personal firewall for protection.
Registry Mechanics for keeping a tidy computer.

UltraEdit ... a must for scripting and programming
Acufinder ... a must to erase all those duplicate map data file.
InfoStore ... a basic note keeper.
TraxTime ... for billing my time...
and SimplyAccounting for counting the beans.
HighLogics MainType and FontCreator for all thing font related.
Winzip
ScreenShotPilot ... free screen capture tool.
Microangelo ... for all thing related to desktop and application icons.
ColorPic... to choose colors off my screen.
WSFTP an old but efficient FTP software.
EasyPHP for testing all things PHP.

My Garmin and cGPSMapper bought for a specific project.... (Personally, I use the REAL maps) Although I use the Garmin as my alternative to field GIS.

Dos command line... still ticking after all these years.

Adobe products:
Illy, Indesign, PhotoShop, Flash and Acrobat.

MapPublisher!!!! Thank you Ted.

Bryce 5.0 free edition... (ok I have it but never used it yet...)

PCI OrthoEngine. this one was expensive... I never upgraded beyond version 7.0.. but what I have does a great job for Orthophotos.

Now for the extra Mapping tools:
ScaleBuddy .... a great utility to convert ground scale and units to and from map scale and units. The company that produced this utility (GroundControl) can't be found ...
ECW compressions tools. ... Not sure where the ecw compressions tools can be found today.
Mentors utilies .... Geotiff examiner and all the other great Mentor utilities (was bought out by AutoDesk I believe).
PosterRazor to cut up large maps and printing them on a small printer.
MapGeocode ... a geocoding tools that uses google maps.
3dem for bump mapping.

Zoomifyer! Cool stuff for easy map presentation on the web.

Delphi 6 (free version) for writing Real standalone exe and dll. ... OK, I also installed VB net to check out .net with MapInfo 9.5

WEBEX.... Great for presentation and collaboration... without the traveling expenses. I consider this my annual finding.
Xdrive from AOL ... 5gigs of web storage for free that you can access anywhere.

maybe FME for Christmas.... If I save enough on travelling expenses.

Regards,

[natcase]

It's kluge-y, and who knows how much longer it will work, but I still use Appleworks: it saves text files as text files; it lets me go back and forth between text and spreadsheet documents to clean up or create data columns; what more could you want? :-)