Exporting Node Coordinates via FME

I received a query today from a reader that wants to export the node coordinates for each electric conductor sent to FME. The sw_gis!node table is not a user table in Smallworld and is therefore not typically exposed to the FME plugin. But if you use the GE FME plugin, you can make use of the pseudo_fields functionality to gather up the relevant node information and send it to FME as a conductor attribute.

The basic steps are:

1. define pseudo_fields on the conductor class (or whatever class you are interested in)
2. write Magik support code that populates the pseudo_fields with appropriate node-based coordinates.
3. create a FME Workspace that reads the new pseudo_fields and processes the appropriately.

This video describes these steps in more detail.

Another Mapping Blog

I am expanding my mapping experiences beyond Smallworld. Particularly, I am getting more involved with OpenStreetMap. In order to spare those of you interested mainly in Smallworld the details of non-Smallworld blog posts, I have created a new blog at boulderalfmaps.blogspot.com

Smallworld Emacs tutorials

There are three more video tutorials for using Igor's Emacs extensions with Magik. There are so many features available in Emacs and you are bound to find out some useful tip that will make your coding tasks more efficient.

Visit http://www.youtube.com/user/MagikEmacs to find out more.

My favorite features...

F12-m - creates a temporary Magik file where you can hack without affecting the original source code files.

Alt-c - useful for tagging a block of code with START CHANGE/END CHANGE when making your own patches.

F2-t - creates debug write() statement around a variable in the code.

F4-s - creates #DEBUG show() statements around a variable (use F3-d to toggle #DEBUG mode)

F3-t - creates a debug write() statement at the top of the method.

Alt-x all - this is one of my all-time favourite tools within Emacs. Great for finding all the occurrences of a string (using regexp) in a file. See 3:20 of MagikEmacs Screen-cast 4 for a demo.

F9 - selects the entire method.

Ctrl-Alt-\ - indents the Magik code in current selection

Alt-space - drops breadcrumbs (ie bookmarks in Emacs buffers)

F5-b - loops through the current breadcrumbs

Alt-F5 - manage your breadcrumbs