Free Stuff for Manifold® System Users

We publish numerous free additions and downloads for Manifold System users. All of these downloads require Manifold System. Don't have Manifold System?  Visit the Manifold.net Online Store right now and get a copy for only $145. 

As new releases of Manifold are issued, free items for previous releases often find their way into the next release.  For example, the free solver packages for Release 4.00 listed at the very end of this page have all been incorporated into the current Manifold version, Release 4.50.

This page covers solvers and other utilities.  For free data, see the Free Maps and Data page. 

NTAD 99 / NTAD 2000 Converter

This free-standing Windows program converts National Transportation Atlas (NTAD) 1999 and NTAD 2000 format files into Manifold/Microsoft  mfd/mdb files.  The NTAD 2000 CD is available free from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics www.bts.gov and includes a huge number of useful files. Example:  the illustration at left shows the 106th Congressional Districts in the US, and has been color-coded by party affiliation (Pink:Democrats, Brown: Republicans, Green: Independent).  

See the NTAD 99 CD Contents Page for a quick list of cool files the new converter allows you to use.  Download the NTAD 99 to Manifold Converter.   Also, make sure to visit the Free Maps and Data Page for links to download the North American Transportation Atlas Database, which includes Canada and Mexico in addition to the US.

UK Ordnance Survey NTF Converter

A special converter done at the request of our many UK customers, this free-standing Windows program converts UK Ordnance Survey NTF format Land Line and Land Line Plus digital maps into Manifold format. Visit the Ordnance Survey's web site at www.ordsvy.gov.uk. The current converter is a beta and has been verified using various sample downloads provided by the Ordnance Survey. Please download it and take it for a spin.  Download the NTF to Manifold Converter. 

Color Areas Solver Package

This solver package installs a Color Areas solver into the Solvers - Utility menu. The solver takes a set of areas and assigns to each one a number (called a color value), normally 1, 2, 3, or 4. If the areas are subsequently colored using auto-formatting with a different color assigned to each color value, then the areas will be colored throughout the map so that no two adjacent areas have the same color.  The illustration shows counties in Pennsylvania that have been colored using Color Areas.  It's so cool that it has its own web page.  Jump to the Color Areas Solver Package web page.

Hurricane Icons

Many people use Manifold to track hurricanes.  We've provided a storms.dll file that has 32x32 and 48x48 256 color icons that may be installed into Manifold System Release 4.50 to provide hurricane images for point icons.

Bezier Curve Solver

Detail (right): Fitting Bezier curves to a point set.

This new solver was created for a hurricane tracking scientist.  Given a set of points, it draws a curved line through them using Bezier curves.  If the points represent observed locations of a hurricane over time, the resultant curved lines will be a "smoother" representation of the path than simply joining points with straight line segments. The solver operates the same as the make line solver described below.   Download Bezier Curve Solver Package.

Note: using Bezier curves to fit lines to points is a much smoother way of fitting lines to points in many other tasks besides tracking hurricanes.  However, since tracking hurricanes and other storms is of great importance to the lives of many people we would like to make this solver as robust and reliable as possible. Please download this solver and pound on it so that it is tested by as many different people as possible.

Dissolve Solver

This solver package installs a Dissolve solver into the Solvers - Spatial Analysis menu of Manifold System Release 4.50.  Dissolve is so named because it "dissolves away" or removes the borders between areas that have identical values in data attribute fields.  Given a set of areas, it can automatically create new areas that are spatial combinations of areas having the same data attributes.  The solver works within a point-and-click Windows dialog and provides for sophisticated "polygon-in-polygon" attribute inheritance and aggregation.

Detail (left): Dissolve solver in action.

This solver is an awesome spatial solver.  It is so cool we have given it its own web page.  Visit the Dissolve Solver web page for screen shots of the main Dissolve dialog as well as screen shots of "before" and "after" operation.

Contour Map Solver

The contour_map.mxz solver package installs a sophisticated contour map generator into the Spatial Analysis solver menu.  

Manifold System Release 4.50 already includes a solver to create one or more contour lines from map objects. The new contour map solver adds the ability to automatically create area objects as well as lines.  Areas are may be automatically created between specified intervals (no overlap between contour areas) or may be created so that the contour area includes all "heights" at that level or below ("wedding cake" effect) or all heights at that level and above (inverse "wedding cake").

The image at left shows contour area polygons automatically created from the point set shown as a grid of small squares.

Although the terminology used in the contour map solver uses "heights", the solver can be used to create contours using any numeric data attribute.  Even more, the solver can automatically compute contours using any ActiveX formula within the solver input box. Wow!... now that's what we call a free solver! 

This solver was created base on votes from the Directions Magazine ( www.directionsmag.com ) "wishlist" for MapInfo.  Tired of waiting for your vendor to respond to user requests?  Feel you have to organize a user's group just so that the GIS vendor will take your "wishlist" seriously?  Time to move to Manifold System!

Save Bitmap Solver Package

Here we go! Another fine, free solver from manifold.net for Release 4.50 users. This solver saves a screen image as a bitmap, using either any object set (layer, etc) or the selection to compute a bounding box.  It was originally intended to be used to create bitmaps for "draping" maps from Map View over 3D surfaces created in 3D View Studio; however, many Manifold people are now using it as a handy method of saving map screen shots that automatically encompass selected objects or a given map layer.

The illustration shows the bitmap created when the Save Bitmap solver is run using the selection (red areas) in the Manifold Map View showing Mexico.

Triangulation Solver Package 

This new solver package provides Delaunay triangulation as well as Selection solvers that extract significant features from point data sets.  

It's so cool it has a page of its own:  See the Triangulation Solver Package Page.

Graticule Solver

Another cool, free download from manifold.net to enhance Manifold System 4.50: the graticule.mxz solver package installs a new solver to automatically create graticules (grids of latitude and longitude lines) in any projection.  Create graticules as any combination of lines, points or areas. Cool!  Download the free graticule solver for Release 4.50.

TeleAtlas Converter in Beta

Manifold's new TAIF to Manifold converter converts TeleAtlas Interchange Format (TAIF) files to Manifold format.  TeleAtlas is a premium European provider of road network and other GIS data.   The new utility is a stand-alone Windows program; however, since it uses Manifold .dll files, it requires Manifold Release 4.50 plus SP1 to function correctly.  Download the TAIF to Manifold converter from our FTP sites.

  True Type Font to Icons Converter Released

The Manifold team has just released TTF2Icon.exe, a really fine Windows NT utility that can convert many True Type fonts at a time into .dll libraries of icons.  These icon libraries may then be used by Manifold (see the Adding Bitmaps and Icons topic in the user manual).  We created this utility for our customers who are using Manifold as well as MapInfo, so they can use symbols similar to their MapInfo TTF originated symbols.  

Important: TTF2Icon requires Windows NT 4.0 or later NT releases. Previous Windows operating systems do not support dynamic resource updates so the straightforward and reliable approach taken in this program is not possible in '95, '98, or pre-4.0 NT.

It works great, and it's free!  Download TTF2Icon.zip  (Searching for the free Iconizer User Manual mentioned in the Iconizer main dialog on copies distributed for promotional purposes? If your copy does not unzip into a help file as well as the .exe, download a fresh copy from the link on this page.  This zip file contains a help file with the user manual.)

If you are ready to jump directly into a massive view of these new solvers in action, check out the thumnails at right.   The upper thumbnail shows a full screen view (162KB .png) of a map of Switzerland within the Digital Chart of the World.  The lower thumbnail shows just the objects within Swiss borders cut out using the Clip Inside solver. (67KB .png).