Hi Budd.
I've been working with GIS extensively over the last four years, and had
played and worked with several GIS packets. I'm working in wildlife
research, where GIS is more and more becoming one of the basic tools. I
had done a bunch of things - spatial analysis, on-screen digitizing,
geographic database development, georegistration and warping, landcover
analysis from satellite imagery, building of 3d models, fly-through
animations for presentations - from college classes to real life
projects.
Most of the work I did was in ArcView GIS 3.2, with Spatial Analyst
extension and Idrisi32, I had a chance to play around for a while with
ArcGis 8.1, and had recently switched to Manifold 5.
ArcView is, in my opinion, an overpriced, buggy toy. Not much can be
accomplished with "out of the box" product. However, there is a strong
user base, and many user scripts are available over the Internet, which
remedies this a little. It has no raster analysis option in the basic
package - you will have to pay about three times the price of the basic
package for the Spatial Analyst extension, which is, again, more or less
a toy compared with other software that is available for this purpose.
I'm constantly amazed how such lousy software gained such popularity.
Still, with a lot of fuss, I managed to do a lot with it.
Idrisi is, on the other hand, one of the best tools I had a chance to
play with. It is raster based and the user interface is a bit backwards,
but when it comes to raster analysis and modeling, it's tough to beat.
Vector data, however, is not one of it's strong points, although it does
handle it. If you plan to do modeling or satellite imagery analysis,
it's probably the best choice. And it's quite cheap too, the way most
GIS prices go. Just read all the manuals and don't get scared by the
user interface if things don't work the way it would be logical for them
to.
I played a bit with ArcGis 8.1 (ArcInfo option), and I must say I wasn't
impressed. It's slow, overpriced, and, again, buggy. They did fix the
user interface from the old ArcView, but that's about it. I didn't do
anything serious with it, so I might not be the best judge. But as far
as I checked it's functions, there isn't much you can do with it and
that you cannot do with Manifold. And, there are things you can do with
Manifold that you can simply forget in ArcGis. If you consider the price
difference the choice is easy.
Our new GIS acquisition is Manifold 5, and I can say only one thing: I'm
impressed. I was looking at Manifold web site for years, but was always
put off by their marketing approach, which strongly reminded me of the
TV infomertials sorta like "buy this training machine, it will make you
look 150 years younger and make your teeth grow back" approach. And, I
guessed that something that cheap couldn't do much. Boy, was I ever
wrong!
I haven't done any serious work in Manifold yet, but I cannot wait to
get started. I tried doing some of the stuff that took me days in
ArcView, and had it done in no time. It handles vector data perfectly,
has a lot of raster analysis functions (although it cannot really match
Idrisi in that, but it has potential...), handles projections better
than any GIS I ever encountered, does wonderful 3D scenes with draped
aerial or satellite images through which you can move in real time, has
a direct GPS console that can show your position on a notebook in real
time, does georegistration, connects to data bases beautifully... the
list goes on and on. And for 245 $ it's a giveaway. The user interface
is intuitive and logical, and the programming options included in the
package seem really good, although I haven't played with them yet. It is
the best GIS for the money, and, depending on what you want to do with
it, one of the best GIS packages around. Idrisi beats it for some
applications, but a lot of that could be easily remedied by scripting.
All the tools seem to be there. The downside, so far, is that there are
not many free tools for it around like for Esri products - but I believe
that with time this might change. Still, I believe that this software
could really revolutionize the way we look at GIS.
All this only reflects my experiences and opinions - other people might
feel different about these issues, had used GIS for other purposes and
have different experiences.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Tomaz.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
bine@kibla.org Sometimes I think the surest sign
that intelligent life exists elsewhere
Tomaz Skrbinsek is the fact that none of it has tried to contact us
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Budd Curttright [mailto:cbuddc@ci.cedar-falls.ia.us]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 8:04 PM
> To: gislist@geoc
|
