Manifold®
System Release 4.50 provides the best Geographic Information System (GIS)
package on the planet today, at an absolutely unbeatable price. It's the
hottest GIS for the hottest modern environments, Microsoft Windows 2000, NT, '98, and
'95. Plus, Manifold goes far beyond GIS to apply data visualization and visual
manipulation of databases to almost any database involving data records that are
related by location or networking relationships.
In addition to geographic maps, Manifold can map data and diagrams from CAD systems and from computer networks. Using Manifold you can display and analyze data from just about any database visually, including maps of web sites, computer systems networks, or even abstract statistical data in arbitrary coordinates. Manifold is the killer analytic app for serious data mining. Note: This web page has yet to be updated to 4.50 standards from the previous Manifold release. Check out
the Release 4.50 Highlights Page for many additional 4.50 features not listed here.Detail at right: The incredible, world-wide topological detail of the Digital Chart of the World. Scene at the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India. Click on the image for a 1024 x 768 full screen showing Manifold loaded and viewing 505 Megabytes of data at once!
To be "best" is a big claim and requires a good balance among many factors. Here's what we think makes Manifold the best GIS you can buy today:
Easier to Use - Take one look at the Manifold SQL Toolbar and you'll agree that Manifold tames spatial GIS by making advanced operators a point-and-click operation. Other systems add a few extensions to SQL for experts to use. Only Manifold delivers intense spatial SQL analytics in a one-line toolbar that anyone can use. Ease of use is a Manifold hallmark. Manifold is totally integrated with Windows: before investing thousands of dollars into any other system, read our Windows Integration Sanity Test page to see if Brand X is as good as Manifold.
Detail
(left): Spatial Operators in the SQL Toolbar - Click on an object in map view and
choose toolbar operators like these. In a single step, find all areas adjacent
to a given area, all points contained within it, or click on a
line segment in a highway map and find all line segments in the map with length
> that line segment's length. Way cool and a snap to use. This
single new tool capability will bring the esoteric world of "spatial analysis"
down to earth where anybody can use it.
Detail (right): Click on the thumbnail to exapand image. NT-based Manifold system using supplemental areas and icon libraries available for free download from our FTP servers. NT Manifold can use photorealistic area "fills" and 3D icons.
More Features - In a single system you get hundreds of functions that other vendors charge extra for, if they have them at all. Does Brand X include Buffer Zones, Voronoi Cells, Contouring, or Surface Interpolation? Can Brand Y import cool new icons and bitmaps from any executable file you have on your system? Does Brand Z allow use of standard Microsoft ActiveX scripting, or do they force you to learn a proprietary language?
Detail (left): Draw one or more
buffer zones using any collection of objects in a selection.
More Power - Only Manifold delivers the extensive array
of serious mathematical wizardry encapsulated in our Networking, Geometric, Statistical,
and Spatial Analytic solvers. Only Manifold delivers SQL extended with over 90
spatial and networking predicates, callable either from expert mode or from a simple,
one-line toolbar that anyone can use. Only Manifold delivers ViewBots™
for the coolest, easiest-to-use computational reporting on maps.
Intense Topology Capabilities - Do sophisticated operations between areas ("polygons" in esri-speak), like combine areas, create new areas that are the intersection of other areas, subtract areas from each other and more. Detail (right): Creating a new area in red that's the intersection of the circular transparent area and the land area of Northern Ireland.
Greater Flexibility - Write new scripts in Manifold using any Microsoft ActiveX scripting language: Visual Basic Scripting, Javascript, and more. Any solver value input box will accept an ActiveX formula as well as ordinary field values. Only Manifold includes the sheer power of ActiveX scripting within any table cell, the Manifold Spread Sheet, or solvers. Mix and match Manifold functions and whatever standard facilities are in the ActiveX language you select.
Send Geo - spam: A simple scripting example shows how to send email using Outlook from within Manifold to objects picked by any Manifold technique. Pick out all customers within 30 miles of a new store and send each email about the new store's opening. Insurance companies can mail all reps within a flood zone information about a new product.
More Data - See the Release 4.50 Demographic Data
page for complete information on the thousands of data fields you get for US cities, states, counties, metro areas and hundreds of fields for world countries. Fresh data, too!
Better Thematic Mapping - Unlimited maps and layers,
with unlimited number of thematic formats, including a separate thematic format for each
individual object, if desired. For every object, you can independently
specify foreground and background color, point icons, area styles, line styles, start and
end arrow head styles and size. 
Automatically alter any of these parameters under the control of underlying data attribute fields to create really cool thematic maps. Nearly infinite flexibility in label formatting, with combinations of dozens of box styles and label styles. Manifold provides hundreds of point, line and area styles to draw map objects! Check out the examples for more.
More Data - You get over $1000 worth of data free on
the Manifold cd, and 30,000 MB of free data sets to download from our FTP servers.
Not only are we the only vendor to give the Digital Chart of the World away free, but
Manifold itself can convert SDTS, TIGER, and VPF data formats. How
much would you have to spend to buy those capabilities from the competition, if they even
have them at all? Only Manifold can provide you with both
TIGER/Line 1997 and the new TIGER/Line 1997 and TIGER/Line 1998 formats conversion!
UK users: coming in October, 1999 a free upgrade for UK Ordnance Survey BNF
format. European users: Manifold provides a free Tele Atlas TAIF
converter.
Unbeatable Price - All the above and much, much more is only $145.
Wow! See our Shopping Page for
more details on buying Manifold today! 
Relentless Innovation - Check out Manifold's News page for the latest information on new products and improvements. If you think Release 4.50 is cool, wait until you see what's coming! Get your copy of Manifold today to be ready for all the new solver packages we have introduced and will be introducing. Some will cost extra, while many are free to download from our FTP site. All make your Manifold System a better buy.
Questions about Details? Read this page first. Check out the What's New, Screen Shots, and Case Studies pages. Visit the Explore page and the Download pages. See the System Requirements page for hardware and software requirements to run Manifold. In a nutshell, we run with Windows '95, '98, and NT 4.0 or 5.0. The Specifications page repeats some of this page, but also provides a comprehensive list of internal Manifold System functions. For ultimate detail, we've put the entire Release 4 User Manual on line... all 286 topics, 1066 illustrations and hundreds of pages of details converted to web form.
Ready to purchase? Visit the Manifold.net Online Store
for a quick, easy, and secure purchase of Manifold products. Keep in mind that what you are about to read is only
part of what you can do with Manifold. We've released many new
products, including numerous additional solver packages for Manifold. Some are free,
like GPS tools, and some cost just a little extra, like our 3d View 3D visualization and
analysis system. See the Products
page for fast information on all manifold.net products.
Manifold System Highlights:
Note: This web page has yet to be updated to 4.50 standards from the previous Manifold release. Check out
the Release 4.50 Highlights Page for many additional 4.50 features not listed here.New Formatting System - Format works from a toolbar that is always available. One can format any combination of areas, lines, or points in a given layer, or one can format the Selection.
Autoformat Styles - Use autoformatting ("thematic mapping") to set styles automatically, including point, line, arrow head, arrow tail, and area styles.
Autoformat Field Labels - Display or not display field labels by the contents of fields, includes autoformatting of font size, color, styles. Display some field labels, and not other.
Format any object independently - Previous releases formatted all areas, lines or points in a layer the same way. One can now independently format each object, with an unlimited number of formats. Each individual object may be made visible or invisible as desired.
New Label System - An easy to use, powerful means of printing the contents of data fields or of applying independent labels.
Easy Control of Label Effects - Numerous caption box styles for every need. Set fonts, font foreground and background colors, font effects, caption box foreground and background, caption box style, alignment, alignment radius, overlap on/off, and overlap stack priority.
Data Labels or Simple Text Labels - Create labels that are bound to data attribute fields, or create unbound labels
Detail (above): The alignment section of the label management dialog. Click on any of the alignment arrows to set the relative position of the the label for this field and object, then move the toggle bar to bring the label closer to or farther from the centroid of the object.
Drag and Drop Positioning - Use the dialogs, or reposition any label at any time just by dragging it to a new position.
Output from Manifold Spread Sheet - Output map spread sheet formula results within map labels.
Fast and Easy Label Controls - "Clone" lots of labels rapidly. Print multiple datafields as labels from the same object, and use the positioning dialog to keep them separate. Print fields on subsets of objects, and not just all the objects in a layer.
Cool New Icons and Area Bitmaps System - Release 4.50 provides a wealth of new patterns for Point icons and Area bitmaps.
Huge Icon and Bitmap Collection - Hundreds of new icon and other styles, including hundreds of cartographic, GIS, and road sign icons.
Unlimited Icons - Use 16 x 16, 32 x 32, or even 48 x 48. No problem! Use 16 colors, 256 colors or even True Color icons.
Easy Addition of New Icons and Bitmaps - Create your own or "harvest" icons from any Windows 32 bit executable file. Grab icons from .dll, .exe or .ocx files that are already on your system. Cool! Plug in external icon modules. manifold.net has already published a few hundred icon and area styles to the FTP server download area. Detail (left): small selection of downloadable "stone" patterns for NT areas.
True Color, Unlimited Area Bitmaps in NT - Using NT? Manifold supports unlimited bitmaps for Area use. Fill your map areas with photographically-realistic area fill patterns.
Expanded Editing - Manifold's new editing capabilities outshine those of many CAD systems. They're designed to make difficult tasks easy and to automate repetitive tasks such as object creation and data entry. Only Manifold works with both geographic objects and networking editing simultaneously.
Autocreation of complex objects (circles, squares, etc) with settable creation of areas, lines, and/or points. Quickly make one or more circles with given radius centered on a given point. Make it as an area, a boundry line, or a set of points or any combination. Autocreate shapes based on TrueType fonts symbols.
Morph tool to apply numerous effects to any selection. Flip, rotate, distort, rescale, mirror and numerous other effects that can be applied to any selection. Automatically correct flaws in data by nudging points to the ends of lines, attaching links and more. Apply a variety of network drawing effects to globally edit all or part of a network into trees, stars, ellipses, and more. Increase map rectangle or crop to existing objects.
Windows style integration - object cut, copy, move, paste.
Network edit mode, with rubber-band deformation of attached links when nodes are moved.
Snap to areas, lines, points or grid intersections.
Automatically draw straight lines, polylines, areas, points and numerous other shapes.
Automatically align objects to vertical or horizontal centerlines, or to upper, lower, left, and rightmost positions.
Dynamic, "living" table and form views - Manifold's Table View is a classic row and column database style view into the data behind the map with a twist: you can operate on the data using Table View as a super-powerful and flexible "control panel" to select and modify the data displayed. You can even create new columns and cells and use them as a spread sheet!
Multiple Table Views - Pop open as many table views as you like. Minimize them and resize them as you see fit.
Automatic Updates - Change an object in Map View or in another Table View, and all the other Table Views that are open will automatically be updated.
Selection Table View - Click open a Table View that shows just the Selected objects. Change a selection using any technique and the Selection Table View will get updated.
Use Multiple Maps - If different maps are loaded, you can maintain views into the same or different maps.
Table View Toolbar - Table Views have a cool toolbar at the top to automate common tasks.
Make Selections from within Table View - Highlight any combination of records within Table View and then Select these objects. You can even make the Selection by combining the highlighted objects with any existing Selection using cool Boolean modes: Replace Selection, Add to Selection, Subtract from Selection, Invert with Selection and Intersect Selection. Intersect Selection for example, would take all the records highlighted in Table View and all the objects in the current Selection, and make a new Selection which consists of only those objects that are in both.
Table View Calculator - Manifold's built-in field data manipulator has gotten even easier to use and much stronger as well. Suppose you have a Bureau of the Census map that lists Land Area in thousandths of a square kilometer. Wouldn't it be nice to have that data in square miles? Changing the data is a one-step operation in Manifold using the Table View Calculator. Do string functions as well.
Use ActiveX Formulas in Table View Cells - That's the Manifold Spread Sheet. Enter a formula using fields from this or any other record, or any Manifold function.
Change Geometric Coordinates - Change the exact geometric coordinates that define areas, lines, or points using a simple subdialog. Edit non-contiguous area objects as well.
ActiveX Scripting throughout the System Manifold supports Microsoft's standards for languages and scripting. Why invent a new language when there is an entire industry supporting Microsoft standards?
Every System includes Full Scripting - Every copy of Manifold includes the complete Edit Scripts system that allows any user to create new solver scripts.
Visual Basic Scripting or Javascript - Use your choice of VBScript, Javascript, or any ActiveX scripting engine language.
Call SQL or Internal Functions - Use SQL, Manifold extensions to SQL (over 90 spatial, geometric, and networking predicates), or any of hundreds of Manifold functions within scripts.
Use ActiveX Formulas in Solver input boxes - Manifold solvers often have input boxes where a value or field to use is provided. For example the Shortest Path solver allows you to specify a field which is used to provide the "distance" value. You can also input an ActiveX formula into such input boxes to allow compound, complex calculations involving many fields or factors. Cool!
Dynamic Map Spread Sheet - One of the coolest, most powerful GIS concepts ever. You can attach one or more computational cells to any object in the map. Just like a spread sheet, each cell can contain a formula that includes values taken from other cells. Just like a spread sheet, each cell is automatically recomputed all the time. Table View is the user interface to this system.
Define any field within Table View to be a computational cell
Write ActiveX formulas involving other cells, other map objects, using any Manifold formulaic construct or function.
Use VBScript or Javascript to write formulas.
Display contents of cells in Map View using same data field display system used for ordinary fields.
Build "3D" computational "machines" by stacking computational layers.
ALL THIS IS ONLY $145! Incredible! How can they do that? AND THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING !
See our Shopping page for more details on buying Manifold today! Manifold System Release 4.50 also includes the following:
Detail (above): Partial view of projection conversions dialog. Release 4.50 includes sophisticated projections management with 14 common projection classes as well as user settable projections and earth ellipsoid parameters. Illustration shows easy selection of State Plane zones.
Geographic Projections - Manifold Release 4.50 supports a wide variety of standard geographic projections and Earth ellipsoids with great flexibility. Standard projections and default Earth ellipsoids:
Detail (above): Release 4.50 earth ellipsoid dialog. Use standard earth ellipsoids or define your own (handy for planetary and satellite maps).
Default Ellipsoids
Easy to Use - A simple dialog allows conversion between any two projections. All State Plane and UTM zones are especially easy to select.
Flexible - Combine any projection and ellipsoid as desired. Specify projection origins, one or two standard parallels in many projections, false northing, false easting, and other parameters.
Extensible - Specify custom ellipsoids using standard ellipsoids as a base. Enables use with planetary and satellite spheres and ellipsoids (Mars, Venus, etc.).
Save and Load - Save and load custom parameters for future re-use. Projection parameters used are stored in the map's properties page as well.
GIS / Cartographic Accessories - Manifold Release 4.50 includes Scale Bar, North Pointing Arrow, and Legend system.
Easy to Use - Pop open an accessory with a single click, and select from a variety of popular styles or create combination styles
Flexible Scale Bar Options - Choose from dozens of styles, and display the scale bar as a constant unit number or as a constant width bar.
Autoscaled Scale Bar - Change Zoom level and the scale bar automatically reacts.
Numerous North Arrow Styles - Use fixed styles with settable foreground / background colors or create your own style from a menu of combinations.
Easy to Use Legend Box - Drag and drop elements from Display Navigator, or click on objects or formats to add them to the legend. Utilize a wide range of controls over styles, fonts, colors, etc.
New Printing and Print Layout System - Release 4.50 includes a comprehensive, flexible system for composing and printing the contents of your workspace.
Print Layout Composition System - Drag and drop compositional elements onto a layout page to create a composition for printing.
Use Map View, Tables, Text, Legend and border lines as elements. Drag and drop any of these elements onto the print composition window. Elements may be resized and repositioned, and their properties specified.
Specify Colors, Border Bars and Effects - Print elements with and without borders, text captions, drop shadow effects and more.
Print on Multiple Paper Sheets - Spread large maps across multiple sheets of paper. It's easy to specify a custom number of sheets in horizontal and vertical rows.
New Display Navigator Window - Display Navigator provides an "overhead" view of maps and layers in your workspace and allows easy browsing and quick setting of ON/OFF display characteristics.
Control maps, layers, Areas, Lines, Points, and even every class of object that has a different format.
Control labels on or off en masse
Drag and drop elements into Legend window, and manipulate legend formatting directly.
STILL ONLY $145! Wow! How can they DO this? THERE'S MUCH, MUCH MORE!
See our Shopping page for more details on buying Manifold today! Ready to purchase? Visit the Manifold.net Online Store for a quick, easy, and secure purchase of Manifold products. Manifold System Release 4.50 also includes the following:
ODBC database connectivity - Manifold connects to ODBC data sources installed on your Windows system.
Use any ODBC compliant database.
Import / Export data directly into or from Table View to an ODBC source.
Merge ODBC source data into maps using the Merge Data engine.
Numerous Data Sources for Maps - Manifold Release 4.50 can create maps by importing numerous types of GIS or Networking Data. Manifold can work with either geographic coordinates or abstract coordinates for CAD diagrams, networking maps, or abstract graph theory. The File - New menu includes wizards for the following:
Greatly Expanded and Enhanced Solvers In addition to the enormous list of solvers published with earlier Manifold releases, the new Release 4.50 system provides break-through sophistication in new solvers and spatial analysis.
New Statistics solvers include Least Squares, Least Absolute Value, and Least Max Value regressions, Covariances, Correlations and numerous others.
Expanded roster of graph theoretic, networking solvers, including Node and Link coloring, Connected Subnets, Kernel Nodes, Peripheral Nodes, Eccentricities, Multiple Salesman and Multiple Postman.
New Geometric solvers include Nearest Neighbors, Farthest Neighbors, Symmetric Nearest / Farthest Neighbors.
Spatial Analysis solvers include Voronoi Cells and Voronoi Diagrams in both exact and approximate versions, Reachable Zone, Multiple Reachable Zone, Buffer Zone, Multiple Buffer Zone, Fast Buffer Zones for Points, Contours, Point Interpolations, and Spatial Correlations using Auto or Cross Correlations along any horizontal, vertical or diagonal line. Point and contour interpolations use the Akima surface interpolation method. How many thousands of dollars must you spend with other vendors to duplicate just these capabilities alone?
Computational Flexibility - Most Manifold solvers feature "combo" boxes for inputs, where you can either select a field to be used for input values from a pull down list, or you can enter a number or even an ActiveX formula to be used in the computation of the value.
New object creation solvers make it easy to create circular zones, boundaries or point patterns at one or more radii centered on a given point.
Creation Flexibility - Most solvers that create objects can automatically create output as your choice of Points, Lines, Areas or any combination thereof. Solvers can create objects in the active layer, in a different layer, or in a new layer. They can send the objects they identify into the Selection or change the value of a given field to a specified value for all objects the solver creates or selects.
Solver Packaging System - Every Manifold system has the ability to write and create new packages of solvers, or to install packages of solvers. This makes it easy to sell or trade solvers or to upgrade your system with new solvers downloaded from manifold.net.
Startup Solvers - You can launch Manifold from a command line with a startup workspace and solver specified. This facilitates using Manifold in a "canned" environment with less experienced users.
The Easiest Spatial SQL ever: SQL toolbar now handles advanced Spatial SQL predicates (contains, contained by, adjacent, etc.) in a single line toolbar that anyone can use. This is a must see for new users.
Dozens of spatial operators: adjacent, touching, containing, contained by, etc.
Use the "not" form of an operator with a single click of the "not" button.
Point and Click user interface: load up the toolbar with the operator desired and click on an object in map view.
Merge Data Engine - Manifold's Merge Data engine automates the complex process of combining different data structures from different maps, or of importing data from a different map into an existing one.
Combine maps with different data structures.
Automatically combine field data using one to one, many to one, or one to many relationships.
Use ODBC sources to merge data into maps. Default ODBC sources include text, dBASE, Access, Excel, FoxBase, SQL Server, and Oracle. Cool!
Automatic "lookup" and insertion of data. For example, lookup FIPS codes for County Names and insert.
Automatic Creation of New Objects for inserted data in many to one merges.
Numerous Major and Minor Improvements In addition to all the major highlights mentioned above, Manifold System includes numerous other facilities to make life easier.
Popup Menu for Toolbar Configuration shortcuts - Manifold includes lots of toolbars and toolbar buttons to automate common tasks. However, one tends to operate the system in various settings that require different constellations of toolbars. For example, a session of intensively editing map data requires a different set of toolbars than simply browsing maps or map data. The pop-up menu allows instant reconfiguration of several toolbars at once. Use the layouts we've provided or save and use your own.
Results History Histogram and Plotting System - The Results History window may be clicked open or closed at any time and is used to maintain a "ticker tape" of results from solver operations. Results involving more than one record automatically create a histograph icon which may be clicked to open up a spectacularly useful data-recycling, plotting, and histogram information system. Detail (left): Portion of least squares line plotted from Results History histogram icon.
Clone Selected Objects tool - Automatically create multiple copies of objects at different scales, either centered upon each other or offset in a given direction. Very useful when replicating "zones of influence" at various scales/distances.
New Help / Online Documentation System - Help now covers several hundred pages arranged in 283 topics and profusely illustrated with 1,068 bitmaps. Each Help topic is now chained in a "browse sequence", so the entire online documentation may be read from beginning to the end using << and >> browse buttons. Over 460 hyperlinks have been added by experienced users of Manifold System to provide jumps between topics.
Whew! We've left out a lot of details, but all the above is part of every copy of Manifold System Release 4.50. You get it all for only $145. Now, isn't that really the best deal ever in GIS?
Call
800-556-5919 today (US callers) to place an order or visit the Manifold.net Online Store
for a quick, easy, and secure purchase of Manifold products 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. Remember, telephone
sales hours are 9 to 5 Pacific Time but feel free to visit the Online Store anytime.
Production Credits
Manifold System Release 4.50 is mastered and replicated at the Silicon Valley KAO facility in Fremont, California. One of the world's highest technology CD and DVD production facilities, this factory also produces Windows 98 for Microsoft. Stacey Ackroyd and Maria Perez of KAO led the Manifold CD replication project team for 4.50. A high speed automated replicator is visible in the illustration at left, behind Stacey, Rajiv, and Jerry Haugg, senior project manager. [Photo shot last year at the Release 4.00 mastering].
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