Frequently Asked Questions

How can you sell all this for $245?  Do I get the complete system? - Yes.  $245 buys you the entire system.  There is no need to buy any "add ons."  You even get the ActiveX / Visual Basic Scripting solver scripting system to create new solvers.  See the Manifold® System white paper "Straight Talk on Software Pricing" for why dealing with a PC market company will get you a full power GIS for PC prices.

See what our customers have said: click on Customer Comments on Manifold Products for sample comments from our customers about Manifold and its products.

My business / institution / government department would like an evaluation copy - Manifold is priced so low that it is infeasible to provide free trials.  However, $245 is not an unreasonable price for a test unit.   Note that we provide a 30 day unconditional satisfaction guarantee to all Manifold System customers.  You may return the product for full credit of the $245 purchase price (you pay shipping expenses both ways) up to 30 days after your receipt of the product.  Note: Products other than Manifold System are not returnable.  Free Trial Edition downloads are available for Manifold® Database Commander™  and for the GPS Tools for Access 97 product.

Do you run with Windows '95, Windows '98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP?  - Manifold System not only runs great with these operating systems, it is the best integrated with Microsoft standards of any comperable application.  See the Windows Integration Sanity Test page for some useful questions to check how well a package is integrated with Windows.  Manifold 5.00 is fully qualified for all Microsoft "Designed for Windows XP" logo program requirements.  If you install Manifold 5.00 on an XP system, Manifold will automatically use Windows XP style.

Are there any maps for European countries provided with Manifold, France or Switzerland, for example?  / If there are, do you include all the layers included in DCW, hypsography, river-system, etc.? - The Manifold CD includes high resolution country boundaries for Europe and a lower resolution map of all world countries suitable for thematic mapping.  Over 180 demographic statistics are provided for world countries.  Most other data is North American - centric. International users may get the entire DCW at no charge by downloading files for free from our FTP servers.  DCW has already been converted to Manifold format for you. We include all the layers. You can browse what is there by visiting the Download page of our web site and clicking on "Digital World".

I don't have PGP... how can I place a secure order by email? - The best way to place a secure order using Internet is to visit the Manifold.net Online Store for a quick, easy, and secure purchase of Manifold products.   Since the Store became operational using encrypted SSL links, we no longer accept international orders by email.

I'm an international customer and cannot use your   800 number ... how can I place an order? - If you are purchasing with a credit card, please visit the Manifold.net Online Store and place your order there.  If you cannot use a credit card, please send prepayment via check or money order directly to manifold.net by regular, hard-copy mail.  Click on the red manifold.net menu button in the upper right hand corner of our page for company info.  Please see the Shopping page for more details on international ordering.

Can I download a copy ? -  Yes, if you purchase it.  All manifold.net Access Add-Ins and all Solver Packages for Manifold System are available only as downloads.   Although Manifold System itself (without data sets) is about 23 MB, you can purchase a downloadable version of Manifold System as well.  Visit the Manifold.net Online Store for all downloadable editions.  Note: If you purchase downloadable Manifold System, make sure you also download the example maps from our FTP servers so you can follow along in the Help file examples.  The example files are not part of the download but may be freely downloaded at any time.

What sort of documentation comes with Manifold? - The System ships with over 1500 pages of on-line documentation organized within the Microsoft Help system.  This provides outline-style navigation, index searches, and keyword searches.    Release 5.00 documentation includes over 600 topics, and 2,400 full-color illustrations.  The manual includes numerous comprehensive examples, including examples of scripting using Visual Basic.  The entire User Manual has been converted to HTML form and placed on this web site for your review.  The Manifold CD includes a complete copy of the documentation as a series of Microsoft Word .doc files, including all illustrations, that have been formatted for printing as a book complete with Table of Contents and Index.  This makes it easy to print out hard-copy documentation for those sections you desire.  It also provides an excellent source of documentation for University GIS courses using Manifold.

How difficult is it to learn Manifold? -  You'll have no trouble if you can read documentation and work through a few examples. It takes about one day of reading the first few chapters in the documentation and working through the Help examples to learn Manifold if you already are familiar with Windows.  This initial investment is essential to understand how to use Manifold and should not be skipped.  Once you have the basic framework in place, it's easy to add understanding of additional features as they are required because the entire system works within a few key concepts.  However, if you do not give yourself the chance to learn those key concepts up front, Manifold has far too many features and capabilities to guess your way through the program.  Experienced Windows users who have learned both Manifold and other GIS packages of similar sophistication tell us that Manifold is better documented and easier to learn.  One factor that helps is that Manifold has been created entirely within recent versions of Windows, so it uses standard Windows methods for standard dialogs such as choosing colors.  This means that many dialogs will be instantly familiar to a Windows user, with attendant reduction in learning time.

Where do I get maps for Manifold? - Use the maps on the Manifold CD to start. You can also use the built-in converters to convert maps from MapInfo MIF/MID, ESRI SHP,  ESRI .E00, TIGER, SDTS, VPF, DLG, and AutoCAD DXF or DWG formats, as well as over 75 other formats.  The Manifold DEM converter can convert standard DEM files or gtopo30 international database DEMs.  US government servers are a great source of gigabytes of free maps and data.  Since Manifold can import data from ODBC databases, numerous "text" and other format databases may be used to create maps.  For even more maps, see the "Free Manifold Stuff" link on the Products page.  and fetch maps and databases from the 30,000 MB manifold.net collection.   These are all free to Manifold users.  Note that Manifold can also create maps of computer networks and web pages using SNMP, DNS,  TCP/IP, HTML URL's, and Microsoft file systems.

Detail:  A map of gold mines in the California Sierra Nevada foothills region colored by elevation in 500 foot increments from Red to Blue.  The San Francisco Bay is just visible at lower left with the California / Nevada border at upper right. Click on the image to see a full screen 1024 x 768 screen shot  of this map.

Can I Import ESRI® Files? -   Yes.   Manifold System Release 5.00 imports data from ESRI's openly published "Shape" format (used with ArcView®, but also used by other ESRI products).  .e00 files may also be imported, as can ESRI ".bil" terrain elevation files and numerous other ESRI file standards.

Can I Import MapInfo® Files - Yes.   Manifold System Release 5.00 imports data from MapInfo's MIF/MID format files as well as from MapInfo TAB format.

Can I export to ESRI or MapInfo? - Yes. Manifold's Export Tool will export to ESRI .SHP, MapInfo MIF/MID, and AutoCAD DXF.

What projections do you support? -   Manifold supports thousands of popular geographic projections with fully customizable parameters, as well as all Earth ellipsoid models known to the US Department of Defense (including a huge library of historical or international ellipsoids).  These include all of the State Plane Coordinate System and UTM zones, organized in an easily accessible way.  See the Release 4.50 Highlights page  for a complete list of projections and default ellipsoid for 4.50.  The 5.00 set of ellipsoids and projections is so large that it covers essentially all projections and ellipsoids encountered in over 80 different countries.

How do I make maps like those in printed atlases or like your website examples? - Any map can only be as good as the data set from which it is made.  Cool maps with lots of neat features usually have a cool data set that has been well organized into lots of cleverly formatted layers.   With interesting data, one can easily create maps of breathtaking aesthetic merit within Manifold.  The data sets we provide, like the USGS maps on the Manifold CD and the DCW data set on the FTP site, are data-oriented maps for professional and technical use.  Making them pretty requires some thought, good taste in the selection of colors and styles, and a little practise. Manifold's autoformatting feature (used to create the Himalayas map example in the download section) makes the job a lot easier. Release 5.00 considerably broadens the number and type of formatting features to make map drawing an easier process.

How do I locate a spot in a map? - Most people prefer to use names and not coordinates.  The best way is to load whatever map you wish and to then insert one of the place name data sets from the Manifold CD.   Then, load the name of the place desired into the SQL toolbar and hit Select.   You can now center the selection using the Center Select button.  If you like to use coordinates, you can use the GO TO command to center a specific coordinate location, a named spot, a selection of objects, a layer or even an entire map.

Sounds like a fine viewer.  Do you have spatial analysis?  - Yes.  See the Release 4.50 Highlights page for a short list. Manifold provides buffer zones, Voronoi cells, reachable zone (drive time), contour line drawing, point / surface interpolation, and auto- and cross-correlation statistics through spatial data.  Manifold has better spatial analysis than MapInfo Pro unless you add Vertical Mapper; however, Manifold costs only $245, not thousands of dollars.  See the News page for links to 5.00 information and to the complete 5.00 user manual.  Manifold System 5.00 greatly extends the spatial analytics available within Manifold.

I'd like to create my new buffer zone (or other object) in a different layer.  Can I do that?  - Sure.  Any Manifold solver can output to the active layer, to a different layer, or to a new layer.

How do I import data from other applications? - Manifold uses Microsoft .mdb format as the native Manifold data attribute storage format.  That means you can create databases with Microsoft products such as Access and directly import the data into Manifold.  Manifold also can import data in sophisticated ways from ODBC or OLE DB compliant data sources.  You can also use a host of converters to fetch data from ESRI .shp, MapInfo mif/mid, VPF, SDTS, TIGER '95 or TIGER '97, DLG-O, or AutoCAD .dxf.  Free, downloadable utilities published by Manifold allow import from a variety of text formats used to specify abstract networks as well.  Manifold 5.00 can read data from almost any vector, raster, image, terrain elevation or database format, over 80 in all.

Can you just send me a unit and bill me? - We require either payment by credit card, prepayment by company check, or receipt of a hard-copy purchase order from government agencies.  We are unable to bill without a hardcopy purchase order. You may also attach a purchase order with PO number to email for electronic ordering. 

What is your address for POs and Payments? - Manifold Net Ltd., 1945 North Carson Street, Suite 700, Carson City, Nevada 89701

Do you have language versions other than English? - Not at this time.

Can you work with data over a network? - Manifold System is not a client/server system at this time.  However, you can open map and data files which happen to be located on remote servers across networks.   Manifold will store the network locations with the workspace properties.

Do you have any warranties or guarantees? - We provide a limited warranty: see the License document in the User Manual. More importantly, every customer receives a 30 day "no questions asked" money-back satisfaction guarantee.

Does Manifold come with a conversion program for common map formats, like *.dxf or *.e00 export files? - Yes. Release 5.00 includes support for over 80 different vector, raster, terrain elevation, satellite photographic and database formats.  All are included at no additional charge.

Is it possible to build new maps from scratch, out of digitalized data in x,y ascii or *.txt format? Yes! two ways: a) import data from comma-separated value text files, or b) use a database like Microsoft Access to create a .mdb file (our native data format, the same as Access) from any one of many different types of database files, and then read that file directly.   The database capability within Release 5.00  has grown so much that Manifold now can read virtually any database format directly, using ODBC or OLE DB connectivity.  Manifold also provides free download utilities to read network descriptions in a variety of text formats.  See the "Free Manifold Stuff" link on the Products page.

Are there any trial copies? - We have Trial Editions for our Access Addins product line.  We don't provide downloadable, trial copies for Manifold System.   If you are not happy with Manifold you can return it within 30 days of receipt for a "no questions asked" refund. Your only risk is the cost of shipping to and from your site.