20 replies to this topic

[BEAVER]

Well, today after struggling with Global Mapper for six hours I ordered Manifold 6.5. Total $260 with FedEX 2 day shipping. With the list of tools this software has, it looks to be worth 5 times that price. Will have it Thursday. Cant wait.

[Martin Gamache]

SP1 is now beta testing so I suspect you will soon have an upgrade for it that should add even more functionality....you'll be labelling contour lines in no time....

Well, today after struggling with Global Mapper for six hours I ordered Manifold 6.5. Total $260 with FedEX 2 day shipping. With the list of tools this software has, it looks to be worth 5 times that price. Will have it Thursday. Cant wait.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[BEAVER]

That was exactly the problem I was having in Global Mapper for six hours. The labels that the software produce look great in the aplication, but as soon as you try to print or export, all hell breaks loose.

[bchubb]

SP1 is now beta testing

... and will be a free upgrade I believe. Full upgrades have been $50 if purchased online and within 30 days of their release, so pretty good value ....

[edelmiro]

SP1 is now beta testing so I suspect you will soon have an upgrade for it that should add even more functionality....you'll be labelling contour lines in no time....

Well, today after struggling with Global Mapper for six hours I ordered Manifold 6.5. Total $260 with FedEX 2 day shipping. With the list of tools this software has, it looks to be worth 5 times that price. Will have it Thursday. Cant wait.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Have you received it?

Ed

[BEAVER]

I've been playing with it for three days. This thing blows Global Mapper away and looks more powerful than ArcGis. The manual has thousands of pages so it will take a while. It opened all the file types I threw at it and the Illustrator Export is unreal. Everything comes in the same way in AI as it looks in Manifold with line styles, layers, etc. I still can't create labels for contour lines. I went thru the entire manual and there is nothing on creating elevation labels (2000 2500 3000 feet) This software is worth every penny. I would pay 10 times the price for it.

[Craig]

I got my copy of Manifold just before Christmas (after reading the recommendations on this forum), and although I haven't done a lot with it yet, it does look like it's going to be a superb application. And so affordable - I would urge anyone who needs to be able to use GIS files, but works mainly with DTP software, to get a copy. It's far easier than trying to fathom how to use all those free GIS applications available on the net.

[BEAVER]

I'm very happy with this software. It does everything I throw at it and then some. I used five aplication playing the import-export game between them. Now everything is in Manifold. What a bargin.

[Nick Springer]

I love it too, I just wish it was it was faster.

[mdsumner]

I love it too, I just wish it was it was faster.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Have you explored the Performance Tips and related topics in help?

What exactly do you wish it was faster at?

[Martin Gamache]

You can configure the hell out of your box and put as much RAM and fast drives as you can afford, in the end there are some things manifold is just slow at and other software is faster...geo-processing is one of them IMO. I've had processes run for days in Manifold tying up my machine that take a couple of minutes with Edit Tools running in Arcmap.

[mdsumner]

You can configure the hell out of your box and put as much RAM and fast drives as you can afford, in the end there are some things manifold is just slow at and other software is faster...geo-processing is one of them IMO. I've had processes run for days in Manifold tying up my machine that take a couple of minutes with Edit Tools running in Arcmap.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can you provide more information for identifying where the bottlenecks are and the kinds of testing to perform, suggestions to make, and even things to decide to want?

What even is "geo-processing"?

The benchmark in my city seems to be "how fast can it run an ESRI-style Identity topology overlay on a thousand million objects?" - which I rather question the pressing need for, but never mind.

I don't want to be narky - I've never actually assessed Manifold on the issue of "faster than this, faster than that" type basis, so it's not really something I can relate to. I've gotten so used to what it can do (with each release) that I probably don't push the boundaries enough. I also can't engage in discussion of anything made by ESRI, as I have zero experience. (I feel kind of in the minority).

However, I am *very* interested in the kinds of things people say they want to do, and perhaps explore how I would re-define the problem or otherwise find useful suggestions to make.

As usual (it's a democratic process), if you want something in Manifold, send in suggestions:
http://www.manifold....uggestions.html

[Martin Gamache]

Don't get me wrong, I like Manifold quite a bit and use it daily. But, for what I do, it has its limitations. I've sent in quite a few requests over the years since I've been using it, some of them like an illustrator export have been met and improved, others like a smarter labelling engine have yet to be implemented. This responsive attitude from the Manifold staff has been a real bright spot.

The type of benchmark you describe i.e. heavy topology overlays...i.e. clipping thousands of objects (contour lines) with hundres of complex polygons and finding them through spatial queries has stalled Manifold on me, on more than one occasion and I've learnt not to bother doing them with Manifold. Unfortunately for me IT IS something I need to do regularly in an efficient way. Luckily, going back and forth betwen Manifold and other software is quite easy.

Overall, very large projects with lots of imagery, terrains, and vectors can sometimes make it very slow, especially when I need to run other RAM hungry software like Photoshop concurrently. It is slow to save these large projects ad slow to open them. As the big fan of manifold that I am, I also don't deny the fact that it can be slow.

The tone of your first messages assumes no one here has bothered to read the performance section in the help and tried to speed things up. Some of us definitely have and still find Manifold slow and deal with it. Not the end of the world, just a fact, it does alot of things very well and that makes it a valuable and powerful tool, just not a fast one. Other's may find it plenty fast for what they do. I envy them.

You've been using Manifold for a while now, I've seen your posts on the Manifold list and georeference for a couple of years. Your insight on that software and other topics will likely be ver very useful to this board. It is a pretty small community here so before you post a message essentially saying RTFM you might want to introduce yourself.....the collective knowledge and talent on this board continues to impress me everyday and I hope you will adding to it....Welcome to cartotalk Mr. Summer .

[BEAVER]

Manifold is much slower than Global Mapper. A 100MB DEM file loads and display shaded image in Global Mapper under ten seconds. It takes over a minute in Manifold. Same aplies to zooming and panning, even without any images or surfaces. You can load 10,000 roads in Global Mapper and scroll the screen just like you are scrolling this forum web page. I takes few seconds just to move that area in Manifold.

[Nick Springer]

I too haven't used Arc enough to make direct comparisions. I agree with Martin's comments in that I am very pleased with Manifolds capabilities given it's price and feature set, and the slow processing is just something I am willing to accept for the most part.

Obviously the application slows down in relation to the amount of imported data I have. The slow saving and opening is a big annoyance, as well as the related fact that it stores the data in each MAP file. The data should be linked externally so I don't essentially keep duplicating large data sets on my hard drive.

I was working with one file recently and whenever I saved the file, I literally picked up a magazine each time while I waited. This stinks because I am a habitual saver, and hit ctrl-S almost out of instinct often.

mdsummer, I too welcome your Manifold extertise here.