Home - Products - Product Overview - Thematic Mapping

Thematic Mapping

The crucial functions of map display and output are successfully addressed with InFoCAD’s comprehensive Thematic Mapping and Plotting utility. The thematic mapper uses the same intuitive, point and click interface as all InFoCAD commands.

InFoCAD’s thematic mapper possesses three main functions, serving as a display tool, an analysis tool, and a plotting tool. The thematic mapper allows users to select display characteristics for up to 20 different record collections at one time. Record collections in the thematic mapper are defined as themes.

Themes are defined as collections of records which are assigned meaningful display characteristics so that they represent a particular theme, The 20 record collections (themes) may be from the same or different databases. Each theme is defined with its own unique display characteristics, i.e., hatch color, border width, legend size, etc., which can be manipulated "on the fly". This is essential to organizations that perform real-time map production.

The supported display characteristics are:

Automatic overstrike protection is provided for symbols, text, pie charts, bar charts, and documents to prevent collision during display and plotting. These characteristics are mapped to the individual records making up the collection using any of the following five options:

Map - display characteristics are assigned to each record according to the contents of a user-specified filed from the database.
Fix - selected display characteristic is constant for all records,
Random - display characteristics are assigned randomly to each record,
Block - display characteristics are assigned to records that fall with user-specified ranges, and
Equal - display characteristics are assigned to each record according to the alphanumeric or numeric data of a user-specified field from the database.
Once a record collection has been mapped to a particular theme, users have the ability to manipulate each record’s individual settings.

In addition to the display characteristic described above, users may also map the colors of each display characteristic using any of the same five mapping options. For example, using a single record collection of communities could be blocked into five ranges each being assigned a different hatch pattern.

The number of residents in into in ten ranges each range being assigned a different color. The ability to control the display characteristic as well as the color provides an unlimited variety of thematic displays for a single collection.

Additional Features

Other features include a reference grid, which can be used as a backdrop for the map, and a frame (standard border sheet), which may be defined as one of several different styles.
Reference grids are automatically generated in the defined Library projection system according to the user’s specifications.

Frames include component such as title blocks, north arrows, scales, and legends. Some of the option selection panels are shown below.

A title block has a user-defined height, and is sub-divided into three sections. The left section may include company or project logos. The center section may contain up to four lines of text. The right section of the title block may be divided into a user-defined number of boxes and may contain project information. All of the title blocks sections allow users to specify individual fonts, sizes, and colors.

Legends

Legends, either single or multiple are automatically built and displayed according built and displayed according to users’ specifications. Users may also manipulate all the characteristics of the legends, including location, style, color, border, thickness, font, and title.

Once a set of themes has been defined, they can be used to create a plot file, manipulated, turned ON or OFF at will, or saved into a set file for later use.

Plotting

In addition to thematic maps, InFoCAD provides users with the ability to plot any Library using the imbedded, versatile Plot utility.

What is important to remember when plotting is that InFoCAD works with real coordinates and units, therefore projects are not worked on at a fixed scale. For example three units in InFoCAD equals three units in the real world, and the user decides whether they are feet, meters, miles, or inches.This means that the user can plot the projects or drawings at any scale; also, on accuracy is lost, regardless of the coverage area.

The Plot utility supports up to 999 different plotter in any one drawing as well as solid fills and percentage fills, allows users to change the scale and the paper size, rotate the drawing, and plot either the current window or only the contents of the current group. All these plot settings can be saved to a file and retrieved for future use.

InFoCAD provides users with a plot read function that shows on the screen what the final plot will look like, regardless of paper size, scale, or rotation. This is a powerful feature that saves time and paper on trial plots.

InFoCAD’s Plot utility creates plot files which can then be manipulated and/or plotted in two ways: 1) InFoCAD’s external plot utility InFoPLOT, which can be used to send the file to many standard plotters, and 2) the HPGL Converter.

The HPGL Converter converts plot files to either the HPG:/2 formats, at which point they can be sent to a plotter, to a laser printer, incorporated into desktop publishing software.

The Thematic Mapper and Plotting utility are all straightforward and easy to use, which are unexpected features in light of their sophisticated output.