Nomenclature

Projects are now the documents of Manifold, and not workspaces. Maps are now compilations of drawings, images and other components.

Files

It's all in one .map file. No more .mws/mfd/mdb files.

External Tables

Tables can now be in external files or served from external providers.

Rasters

Called images. It's like getting key parts of Adobe PhotoShop within your favorite GIS. An amazing and huge increase in capabilities accompanied by many new commands and options.

Surfaces and Terrains

Fast visualization of elevation and other data in 3D and in shaded 2D. Terrains can be copied and pasted as tables, drawings, or images using various methods. Vectors and rasters can be overlaid onto 3D terrain visualizations in high resolution.

New Formats

Included is import capability for virtually every vector, raster and terrain elevation format that occurs in the GIS industry: over 60 formats in all. Sophisticated formats are now imported in sophisticated ways, with multiple drawings automatically created and used within maps for some formats.

Charts

Cool data mining and 2D charting. People pay thousands of dollars for specialty data mining tools and get less than this.

Double Precision

Manifold now uses double-precision floating point for all coordinates for perfect precision, all the time. No need to think about Units2Degrees scale factor any more.  Accuracy is always better than a hundred-millionth of a meter.

Tracing

Conversions from raster images to vector drawings can be made using Manifold's new tracing tools. These allow manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic creation of vector drawing objects based upon images.

Georegistration

Images or drawings may be georegistered using other images or drawings as a guide. Three georegistration methods are available: simple, numeric or affine to allow the best use of available data with the least effort.

Spatial Geocoding

An advanced merge data tool allows generic geocoding that can achieve multi-level, multi-field matches to geocode tables based on geographic information in drawings. Note: this is not a specialized, address geocoder; rather, it is an advanced data merging tool.

Database

Manifold no longer depends upon Microsoft's Jet database engine for manipulating data within Manifold projects. All data within a project is handled directly by Manifold's dedicated database routines. This is much faster than Jet for data attribute sets of all sizes. External data linked into Manifold will use either whatever server provides the data or will use Jet for Microsoft format files. Manifold retains an embedded copy of Jet for use with Microsoft format files and to facilitate import/export to Microsoft formats.

Expanded, Fuzzy SQL

SQL now includes full DDL and has also been extended with numerous new predicates, including "fuzzy" predicates allowing use of Manifold's neurofuzzy engine within SQL queries.

More Like This

Manifold tables now allow "more like this" and other Commander functions: right click on a record handle and choose "More Like This Record" and the table will automatically be sorted so that more records like that one are at the top.

No Map Rectangle

Drawings and maps are limitless. The "rectangle" is specified only when printing.

Customization

Customize point styles, palettes, units of measure, ellipsoids, datums and coordinate system presets.  Add new scripts as buttons to the Custom toolbar or as menu items in the Tools menu.

Projections

Maps now project on the fly regardless of the native projections of drawings and images. There are now hundreds of new projections, datums and presets that provide many thousands of options.

Layers Pane

The new Layers pane is easier than tabs when many layers are in play. See formats for all drawing layers at a glance, if desired. See channels within images as well.

Layer Transparency

In addition to invisible pixels and pixel transparency in individual images, map windows can now assign a percentage transparency to any layer in the map. Note: Layer transparency requires Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000 or XP.

Multiple Views

Open as many views as you like, and as many windows or components as you like. Toolbars, panes and other controls will automatically adapt their contents to whatever window has the focus.

Linked Views

Windows can be linked so that panning in one window pans the other as well, or zoom changes in one change the other. A linked cursor can be used to show position in multiple windows at once.

Windows Copy and Paste As Paradigm

Many dialog-driven procedures to convert data types have now been replaced by simple copy and paste as operations within the project pane. For example, there is no more "import coordinate coded database" via a set of dialogs. One now simply imports a geocoded table and then does a Copy of the table followed by a Paste As as a drawing. Drawings can be copied and pasted as geocoded tables. To get a table of selected points in a drawing (say, such as certain cities with their locations), one pops open the drawing, selects the cities desired, copies them and then pastes them in the project pane as a table. This is a very easy and powerful paradigm.

Expanded Spatial Overlays

Immensely expanded from 4.50.  Spatial overlays now work between any combination of areas, lines and points using a wide range of sophisticated spatial relationships and data attribute field manipulations.

Undo / Redo

Improved Editing

Vector editing is now "smart mouse" based with numerous controls that are more powerful, yet easier to use, than previous versions.

Improved Snap

Advanced Snap capabilities allow better control over snapping to lines, areas, points, etc.

Formatting

Now restricted to the same format per layer. No more formatting on a per object basis. Although this is a restriction compared to 4.50, it ends up making the system a lot more comprehensible and easier for people to manage. The result, we believe, is greater capability within a more orderly system.

Scalable Styles

Hundreds of new point styles, all of which may be easily scaled.

New Label system

A huge, new, very flexible system that provides labels within their own Labels components. Formatting is the same throughout the entire labels component, and multiple labels components can be stacked within a map to achieve exactly the effect desired. Labels may be rotated or aligned to objects, including curved objects. Drawings can be copied and pasted as a labels component to automatically create labels.

Zoom Range Control

Drawings, images, and labels can now have a specified zoom range over which they appear. This allows construction of maps where different types of labels or objects appear as one zooms in.

New Printing System

Printing to scale and much, much more.

Print to File / Image

Save any window to an image or file, including saves to .emf metafile formats for use by other applications.

Decision Support System

Originally developed for Database Commander and available in Business Tools, this is now integrated within Manifold and embeds within Manifold the manifold.net neurofuzzy inference engine.

Saved Selections

Save, preview and reuse selections via the Selections dialog. This is an essential aspect of the new look that must be studied. See the Selection topic in the Introduction.

Autoscope

Manifold will automatically apply operations to the Selection, if one exists, and otherwise to the entire component.

Hot Scroll and Shortcuts

No more scroll bars! Windows can now be scrolled at any time by ALT-right clicking near their borders in the desired direction. Numerous keyboard shortcuts allow fast manipulation by intermediate and expert users.

GPS Console

ViewBots

ViewBots have moved into their own pane. The SQL Toolbar is now just another ViewBot line, so you can have multiple simple queries at once.

Transform Toolbar

This was so popular as a Commander user interface it has been brought into Manifold for fast access to "one parameter" transformations.

Fewer Solvers, More Transforms

Many of the functions performed by 4.50 solvers have been moved into Transform Toolbar operators or into ViewBots. This provides a faster, more general interface.

Topology Factory

Topology Factory functions have been moved into the main release.

Active Columns

Another import from Commander, this is a better user interface than the "spread sheet" within tables used in 4.50.

Programming

An absolutely fabulous subsystem allowing standard Visual Basic scripting and JavaScript within a forms-based environment like Visual Studio provides. You will have to port your old scripts since the interfaces have changed (it will be worth it).  Also supports scripts written in PERL, Python, or other ActiveX scripting languages.

External Programmability

Manifold can now be called from external applications as needed. Programs written in Visual Basic or Visual C++ or any other standard Microsoft development language can call Manifold.

Forms

Computer Network Functions Deleted

With Release 5.00, Manifold no longer incorporates computer network functions such as auto-discovery via SNMP and other non-GIS functions. We feel these functions are important enough to merit their own product.

In addition, many of the more exotic graph theory / networking functions have been removed from the base release.  These will reappear in a network analysis extension to be released at a future date.

Internet Map Server

For use with Microsoft IIS 5, the Manifold Internet map server allows easy publication of projects to web pages. Users can pan, zoom and query maps.

Zones

Zones are spatial indices that provide a convenient readout in the status bar based on the mouse cursor's position. 

Thousands of small improvements

Virtually every Manifold command has been improved in some way. For example, there are now various selection styles available to show selected objects. The tracker tool can now track ellipsoidal distances even without the need for a projection. Selection tools now include "on center" versions and a greater variety of tools. Snap works even in commands that utilize secondary mouse clicks. Much more!