Are you good at distinguishing colours? You are? Really?

 

Working in GIS and making maps on daily basis will test your colour hue recognition to the test. In some cases that is easy because you are using limited number of colours (I should be saying colour hues). But when it get to colour ramps, lots of layers and rasters things are far more difficult.

If you would like to test your skills then go to the x·rite site and read about FM 100 Hue Test. In short there are 85 colours you have to sort and this will measure and show zones of colour confusion.

You can take the software versions of the test here.

I took the test and I have to say it was harder than I thought. I guess my eye sight is not as it used to be…

Here is how I have sorted the colours.

 

Once you have another look you see that you could do this better. Actual results are displayed in graphic like one below.

I was little bit disappointed with my score and I’ll try that again. Some other time. How did you do?

This will be added to an activity list as ‘must do’ for the cartography course I’m teaching.

ArcGIS 9.3 SP 1 released and other updates

ESRI has released Service Pack 1 for ArcGIS 9.3 earlier this month. Service pack is available for download from ESRI’s support site download section. The service pack was announced earlier (see posts ArcGIS 9.3 SP1 fixes, Part 1 and ArcGIS 9.3 SP1 fixes, Part 2)  and more fixes are added to the list.

 

Even if you are not too interested in bug fixes you should consider downloading and installing it because it also introduces new functionality. New features are listed separately in a PDF document. The feature list includes:

• Export to CAD is now ArcView license tool
• Support for WFS 1.0 (1.1 is already supported at 9.3)
• Improved visibility of scale bar for web applications
• Support for Windows Mobile Smartphone’s
• Full support for editing data in PostGres SQL
• Progress indicator for map and globe caching

 

 

Unfortunately, there was a one part of code that was not included in SP 1. That is Topology validation patch and it is available as separate download.

 

ESRI has released Service Pack 1 for all other 9.3 products. So now SP1 is available for:

• Military Overlay Editor (MOLE)
• ArcGIS Business Analyst (requires login)
• Production Line Tool Set (PLTS) and Solutions

 

I would recommend you download these and check the new features list.

SketchUp 7 released

Google has released a new version of SketchUp today. This is version 7 and it was in development for about two years.

 

Here are most important new features:

 

• crossing lines break automatically
• scaling without stretching
• new interact tool
• search 3D Warehouse from component browser
• download models locally
• create and save custom templates
• new user interface

 

Professional version (one you have to pay for) has some additional features:

• Create Dynamic Component (smart scaling, etc)
• Custom attributes – metadata
• Report generation
• Layout 2 features
• larger models and paper size support
• long live measurements
• curves, editable paths
• move, rotate and scale without changing tools
• export to images
• explode models
• Style Builder
• create custom sketchy styles
• multiple mediums available (marker, pencil, crayon, etc)

 

For download and some videos check out the SketchUp page.

 

Here are some videos from YouTube…

 

What’s new

 

Intersecting lines

 

 

Dynamic components

 

 

There is plenty more videos on YouTube but these are for version 7 specifically.

Have fun creating models and share them on 3D Warehouse!

 

P.S. if you feel like you are up to a challenge then head to Google SketchUp 3D Challenge and get busy.