Creating a 3D PDF from Smallworld

Lassi Tani (@Lassitani) has posted a very cool example of creating a 3D PDF visualization of Smallworld data using FME at http://geolassi.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/from-smallworld-to-3d-pdf/

Some cool geospatial events in Denver in the next year

There are some really exciting Geospatial events happening in and around Denver in the next year. While they are not strictly related to Smallworld, I think these would be great venues for spreading the word about Smallworld technology to a wide geospatial audience.

• WhereCamp5280 - November 19-20, 2010
• State of the Map 2011 - September 2011
• FOSS4G - September 12-16, 2011

At the Smallworld Americas User Conference in Baltimore this year, a GE-hosted forum discussed how Smallworld could gain exposure in the big world. I would like to suggest that one way to do this is to provide sponsorship for these events and get staff/partners to provide presentations for these events. At the very least, send observers.

PS. If you are travelling from out of state/country, you can attend the two September 2011 events in Denver, then spend a week travelling around the Rocky Mountain west and then travel over to Chicago for the Americas User Conference (September 25-29, 2011). What a great month that is going to be!

Decimal Degrees vs DMS

I had someone ask me today how to configure Smallworld to show Decimal Degrees or Degrees/Minutes/Seconds.

I found two ways. The one way is to use the Administration application's Unit Display Groups tool to change the "Sub Units?" value

The other option is to create some Magik code in your image build process that changes the sub units setting.

E.g.

_block
 unit_manager.unit(:degree).default_format.use_sub_units? << _false # (or _true)
_endblock 
$

Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis examples

I recently had the good fortune of being able to teach a course on Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis (GSA). If you haven't seen the product, you really should try to get a demo from your GE Smallworld representative. As the GE documentation states, "Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis is a new, exciting, and easy to use business intelligence product from GE Energy Services."

During the training, some of my students asked me to put together some videos of use case scenarios that were more relevant to their situation. What follows here are 4 videos (each less than 5 minutes) that I made for them but now make available for everyone to get a quick introduction to some of the possibilities of GSA. In my mind, GSA has many great spatial intelligence features, but these videos touch on only a very few of them.