Manifold Specifications

See the Release 4.50 Highlights for an introduction to Release 4.50 capabilities..    Note that Release 4.50 is a very major upgrade to the system and includes numerous capabilities not mentioned here.  Don't forget to see Screen Shots and the Online User Manual as well.   Make sure to check out the News page for the latest releases and information on cool new products.  Lots of free stuff is announced in News as well!

The $145 purchase price of Manifold System Release 4.50 includes all features listed below.  There is no need to purchase "add ons."  

See the Release 4.50 Demographic Data  page for complete information on the thousands of data fields included on the Manifold CD for US cities, states, counties, metro areas and hundreds of fields for world countries. 

Check the Requirements page for system requirements: In particular Manifold System requires Windows '95, '98, or NT (4.0 or 5.0). 

Map Detail at Left: Northeast, Southern, and Great Lakes regions of USGS 1:100K-scale maps from Manifold CD republication.  Populated Places NTAD extraction overlaid as points.

Manifold System is an integrated system to discover, locate, analyze, and manipulate data using visual interfaces. Data can be geographic data such as maps, CAD data such as the circuit board at right, abstract data such as the logical organization of file systems and web sites, demographic or statistical data, or data that combines all of these elements, such as the logical and physical structures behind a Wide Area Network.   Detail at right: PC motherboard with IC layer formatted by cost.

Manifold will display the data as elegant maps and allow you to use those maps as live interfaces to analyze and manipulate that data using Solvers.   Solvers provide in a point-and-click interface hundreds of functions from statistics, SQL/database logic, computational geometry, graph theory and network analysis.  

Thumbnail at left: Manifold is your gateway to visual database access:  Draw a CAD or other diagram and link the elements to a database by visual position.  Modern motherboards used hundreds of components sourced from dozens of vendors.  The example shows a group of integrated circuits that have been selected by clicking on them with a mouse, fetched from the database in Table View, and then the costs automatically summed and displayed in Results History.

USER INTERFACE AND DISPLAY

Map View Detail: CIESIN block-level Census demographics for Santa Clara County. Population densities within blocks plotted exponentially using autoformatting in four intervals (0-3, 4-26, 27-151, and 152-4398 residents per block). Since "green" often means less population, we've used light yellow dots for max density and dark green for least density. USGS Palo Alto Quad map used as background with autoformatting of Roads layer by road type and hydrography in blue.  Labels drawn using ScalaSans Caps font, a FontShop font. Yellow diamond marks the Menlo Park USGS regional HQ.  Detail shows part of Annotations toolbar and part of main toolbars at upper edge of Map View.

User Interface: Windows / Office '97 style "railbar" controls with full support for Windows standards:  tool tips, pop-up right-click menus, standard Windows dialogs, full font support, full color support, standard Windows selection techniques. Fully dockable and repositionable toolbars. Distance measuring computation using Ellipsoidal metric. Numerous user parameters, file locations, etc., settable as user options.  Manifold remembers workspace settings and preferences.

Capacity and Performance: Will load maps and data up to the capacity of your virtual memory.  The thumbnail at left expands into a 1024 x 768, full screen view of Manifold loaded with 505 Megabytes of data: the entire Asia section of the Digital Chart of the World including Aeronautical, Roads, Populated Places, Political, Ocean, Transport, Physiology, Land Use, Culture, Drainage (Hydrography), and Hypsography.  This image was snapped on a dual Pentium II, 266MHz machine running NT4.0 and equipped with 296MB of RAM.   With all layers displayed as shown, this machine takes about 15 seconds to redraw the display with autoformatted Hypsography, Drainage, and Land Use. 

In this example, Manifold was simultaneously handling everything from New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia to the Middle East, the Black Sea, the Arabian Peninsula and all across India throughout Southeast Asia up through Japan.  Literally everything is available for instant search and display.  From the view displayed, you could load "Papeete" into the SQL toolbar, hit Select, and then press the Center Selection button to teleport the view onto Tahiti.  If there's more than one "Papeete" in Asia, you could teleport back and forth between them at the press of a button. Views zoomed closer in will teleport almost instantly.

Display and Navigation: Navigate using Layer Tabs, View selections, scroll bars, center point, forward and back view, zoom to fit, zoom box, zoom in, zoom out. Autoposition objects in selection, beginning, end, next, previous, center in display, autoanimate, or Instant Form View. Full Screen Mode (see above thumbnail. very cool!).

Map View: click the thumbnail for a full size 800 x 600 example. 

Map View: Using extensive style, size, and color formatting capability to display points, lines, and areas in database as x y map using latitude, longitude, or any fields as abstract x/y coordinates.  Display any datum (eg, WGS84) system in abstract coordinates using 14 standard projections, customizable projection parameters, numerous Earth model ellipsoids, and fully user settable parameters. Create unlimited number of layers within map and overlay unlimited number of maps. Move cursor with snap to areas, lines or points.  Use Grid, rulers, spots, and dynamic mouse solvers (Bearing, Distance, Objects Intersected, Count areas under mouse, Object Number under mouse). Drag and drop layer tabs to set order in display stack, double click layers tab to turn layers on and off.  

Annotations: Embed and display text notes, record voice notes through microphone, play sounds or midi music, embed photographs or images using virtually any format of graphic file (JPG, BMP,.png, etc), display movies.  Embed URL references within map to autospawn browser or Java Applet, or execute any command line interface command.  Animate selected objects using pulses or color effects animation.   Insert Microsoft OLE objects such as charts, graphs, text documents, spreadsheets,  etc.  

Use Map View to display geographic maps, abstract maps of networks such as computer networks, maps of CAD diagrams or drawings, or for general purpose X - Y manipulation of complex data sets for data mining using geometric relationships, SQL logic, and statistics.

Results History Detail: Results History window popped open over previous example.  We've selected Census city blocks within 1/2 mile of an urgent care medical facility in downtown Palo Alto (bright yellow highlighting) and fed them to the One Way Frequency statistics solver. We told the solver to tally how the population data are distributed within 10 equal intervals.  Check out the help page for this solver for more info.  This entire operation is done with mouse clicks and takes about 10 seconds.

Results History Window:  A resizable, dockable window that displays a "calculator tape" readout of all text results output by solvers or SQL.  Edit, cut, paste, select information from Results History to pipe to other processes.

Table (Database) View:  Display and manipulate the database structure of your map from within Manifold. See the entire data set or any selection from Map View in typical database view as rows and columns: supress or show empty fields, rename fields or columns, change column widths, autosort any column by clicking, insert new fields [enumerated fields, integers, floating point, or strings], delete fields, print table.

Advanced Field Calculator Detail:   Advanced Field Calculator toolbar, shown at bottom edge of a Table View window that's been opened on top of Map View.  Pick fields in left and right boxes and select an operation from the pull-down menu in the center.  Illustration also shows part of the Layer Tab display and scroll bar at the bottom of Map View.

Advanced automatic field calculator within Table View: combine and recompute any field (column) from any other field (column) using pull-down field selection boxes and these operators: add, copy average to, copy maxima to, copy minima to, copy sum to, copy to, divide by, exponentiate, make absolute value, multiply, negate, power of, reverse divide, round, round down, round up, saturate max, saturate min, subtract, subtract from, take natural logarithm, take square root.  No GIS package has anything like this, a must when massaging large demographic data sets.  Table view calculator includes numerous string operators as well.

Form View: show all fields in a single record (object): New Field, Delete field, Print Record, Advanced field calculator as in Table View, Toggle Empty Fields On/Off, jump to beginning, jump to end, previous, next.

Formatting Controls: Easy tree diagram to navigate and specify objects formatted and displayed. Format maps, layers, and points, lines or areas within layers.

Custom Bitmaps and Area Styles: Harvest full color icons from files already in your system using standard PC techniques.  Install new collections of hundreds of cool, 3D icons, TrueColor icons, photorealistic areas (NT systems), and more.

Format Styles, Sizes, and Foreground/Background Colors: Format using bitmaps for point icons, line patterns, or area fill patterns.  Hundreds of styles supported.  Automatically dial size up or down for resizable point and line styles. Format any points, lines or area style colors in both foreground and background color. Use predefined colors, specify custom colors, or pick from any of millions of color choices using the maximum number of colors supported by your graphics card.

Thematic Mapping:  Draw maps with gradations automatically: Automatically format by field values.  Autoformat may be controlled by any numeric or enum field value in any desired number of steps, with gradation either in linear or exponential increments automatically, and a histogram display as a guide with how may objects fall into each step defined. Autoformat foreground color, background color, size or spacing, or style.  Automatically interpolate gradations of color between any two choices.

Text Formatting: use any Windows (True Type) Font, controlling Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Strikeout, or Underline Style, Color, Point Size, Drop Shadow, Halo, Relief,  and Legend Boxes in Square, Rounded Edge, Circular or Ellipse Styles.  Autoposition text legends for any object field to upper left, lower right, upper right, lower right, or intermediate positions from object. R4 provides an extraordinary selection of text label controls.

Projections:   Release 4 provides extensive projection capabilities, including morph solvers to convert projections, redisplay in new projections, etc.

CREATING MAPS AND EDITING

Editing: Create and edit points, lines, polylines, areas.  Instant data entry for quickly adding data attributes when new objects are created.

Network and Map Morph Effects (Global, Automatic Edits): Crop or Expand Map Rectangle, Scale Map Rectangle, Distort (parallelogram/perspective) Map, Flip Vertical or Horizontal, Rotate, Autosmooth data (Lines/Links/Areas), Grid (Orthogonalize Lines/Links/Areas/Points), Cylindrical Projection, Ellipsoidal Projection

Network Morph Effects: Map Network onto Spiral Parametric Ellipse, Map Network onto Balanced Parametric Ellipse, Map Network onto Fractal Star by Width or Depth, Map Network onto Fractal Tree by Width or Depth, Map Network onto Line, Arrange Network by Force Field

Click on Thumbnails: Network maps of a website re-drawn automatically using Morph fractal tree and fractal star effects.

Map and Network Creation Facilities: Create new blank map with option of using existing map or database as template for fields structure, Import coordinate coded database using any fields as X, Y coordinates or latitude/longitude in decimal or degrees-minutes-seconds formats, Import AutoCAD DXF format, Create network map of website using web files, Create network map using networked or local file system, create network map using SNMP.

Click on Thumbnail: Import database example.

SNMP network autodiscovery: Use specifiable community and initial host IP, specified timeout and retries, using mib-II and following: system, interfaces, at, ip, icmp, tcp, udp, egp, snmp and rmon.  Can save and load SNMP autodiscovery parameters for repeated network exploration. 

Click on Thumbnail: Full sized example of the network autodiscovery dialog.

GIS Formats Supported: Import maps from coordinate-coded databases using Microsoft mdb (Access) format; converters for the following available free at the Manifold FTP site: .csv comma-delimited text formats, MapInfo .mif format, USGS DLG format, SDTS format, TIGER/Line 95 and TIGER/Line 97,  ESRI ArcView "shape" format, and DEM import via external converter.

Click on Thumbnail: Sample TIGER/Line ® converter dialog.

Database Preview: Browse the structure of Microsoft MDB format databases from within Manifold before importing them. Click on Thumbnail (to right): Database preview of a table in the Microsoft Access "Northwind" sample database.

Maps Provided: Over 600MB of maps, including USGS 1:2,000,000 complete US, Geographic Names Information System, Bureau of Transporation Statistics National Transportation Atlas Database (National Highway Network, Airports, Airways, Amtrak Stations, Autoramp, Trailer on Flatcar, Railroads, Congressional Districts, Ports, Runways, Waterways, and more), Zip Codes, Canada and Mexico, Base Maps, and more. Free at the Manifold FTP site: Digital Chart of the World, all USGS 1:100K high resolution US maps, all US streets and intersections,  and over 2 Gigabytes of US Census Bureau data for states, counties, and even block level data.

GPS Interface

Manifold System Release 4.50 includes both a GPS Console and a GPS Tools solver package.  The GPS Console includes the best GPS interface in the business, including moving map capability and full interactive GPS data acquisition.  GPS Tools Solvers include Setup, GPS Current Position, and GPS Import.  Use any NMEA compatible Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver.  Create map Points with data attributes that include Latitude, Longitude, Speed, Bearing, Time, Altitude, GPS Quality, and the Number of Satellites in view.   Waypoints and Routes may be downloaded in batch mode, or the GPS can be interrogated automatically to "track" GPS data. GPS Tools wizards make GPS data acquisition a snap.  Here's a really cool feature: just one mouse click synchronizes your computer system clock to the millionth-second atomic clock accuracy of the GPS system.  Excellent!

3D Visualization (optional - $45 Price)

Manifold's 3D data visualization and analysis add-on product provides 3D visualization of map data and 3D analysis. See the News page for screen shots.   The 3D system includes a 3D View window and three control panels: 3D Controls, 3D Analysis, and 3D Voyager™.

The system allows visualization of any attribute field from Manifold maps as a 3D surface.  Z coordinate data may be terrain elevation or the content of any data attribute field.  Surfaces may be visualized at selectable detailization, and may be seen as points, wireframe or solid surfaces, with numerous visualization options.  Surfaces are constructed automatically using a surface interpolation algorithm (Akima method) from selected data points.  Surfaces may be "spun" on any axis, with "camera" position specified.

Analysis includes profiles, profiles/lines, "tunnel" or "bridge" clearance, volumetric analysis, line of sight analysis (visible points along a line) or one or two areas visible from start and stop points.  Manifold's 3D visualization also allows "waterline" effects, to allow interactive movement of a Z "waterline" plane to cut data at various levels.  Excellent for visualizing flood plain action.  See Connecticut flooded from above in a 320KB.png animation or at an oblique angle in a 350KB.png animation.   Note: image quality has been degraded in the animations to save download time.  Real Manifold 3D View uses millions of colors to achieve smooth gradients!

Detail (right): 3D view showing a line of sight analysis line from start point (blue) to end point  (red) on a 3D surface visualized as a wireframe model.

ANALYSIS

If there is a function you would like to see added, tell us.   The following functions are implemented as solvers in Release 3.  Release 4 adds dozens more.

Click on Thumbnail: Pull down main solver menu with Networks submenu.

Spatial Analysis: Buffer zones, reachable zones (drive time), Voronoi diagrams, contour line drawing, point and surface interpolation, and cross- and auto-correlation through spatial data.  R4 also includes spatial operators (touching, adjacent, containing, etc) within the SQL Toolbar.

Statistics Operations: Mean Values, Field Variance, Field Sums, Field Percentages, Maximum and Minimum values in sets, Exceptional Field Values, Typical Field Values, Correlation Matrix;  Univariate Statistics: By confidence interval; Mean, Variance, Standard Deviations, Skewness, Excess, Minima, Maxima, Ranges, Coefficient of Variation, Upper and Lower Mean Confidence Limit, Upper and Lower Variance Confidence Limit; One Way / Two Way Frequency: Equal length intervals, Equal length Intervals within Bounds, Intervals by Cutpoints, Intervals by Constant Width Classes; Order Statistics by List, First or Last order Statistics by Number

Geometric Operations: Bounding Rectangle, Common Centroid, Centroids, Convex Hull, Star Polygonization, Nearest Neighbor, Measure Minimum and Maximum X and Y size of objects, Distance from any object in a set to a given location, Distance from any object in one set to any object in another set, Lengths of lines or collection of lines, Compute lengths of lines or lengths of perimeters of Areas, Compute areas, Build areas from indicated points or lines, Build lines from indicated points, Split Lines or Links (insert node), Split sets of lines or links along horizontal or vertical lines, Join two lines or Links, Attach Points, Attach Lines, Find Unattached Nodes, Find Unattached Links,

Networking Analysis: Test Connectivity, Find Self-Loops, Find Loops, Find Critical Nodes, Find Critical Links, Minimum Node or Link Cutset, Find Reachable Nodes by distance or field, Shortest Path [by computed length, manhattan metric, maximum metric, number of inflection points, number of hops, or value of given field (eg, least cost, grade, etc)], MiniMax Path, Maximum Network Flow; Routing: Build spanning tree, Build Steiner Tree, find optimal path through all links or Loop through all Links, Find Loop through all Nodes, Shortest Loop, Find loop of given fixed length [by Euclidean, manhattan or maximum metric; by number of inflection points, number of hops or value of a given field], Classic and Partial Postman Route Sovlers, Classic and Partial Salesman Route Solvers [R4 adds plural, multiagent Salesman solvers by defined order], Find Emergency Center of given point set on network using given weights on links and nodes, Find Regular Service Center of given point set on network using given weights on links and nodes; Network Structure:   Test network for planarity, Find connected subnets, Find Leaves, Find Blocks, Find Dominance Set, Compute metric properties, Compute pseudo-diameter of network, Find Loop Base and Cutset Base, Find Node degree, Locate Adjacent Nodes or Links, Locate Incident Nodes or Links, Create a Cross-Free Decomposition, Find Minimum Coloring on Nodes or Links, Maximum Matching, Build a Gabriel Network on Given Points, Create a Relative Neighborhood Network on Given Points, Create a Clusterization Network on Given Points, Create Greedy Triangulation Network on Given Points, Create a Complete Network on Given Points, Utility: Consolidate Paths within Network, Save Set to New map, Save Set with Abstract Coordinates, Save Objects as DXF file, Save / Load Objects as simple Text file, Change Link or Area Direction (Directed Networks)

SQL and Database Operations:  Manifold can directly work with any MDB (Microsoft Access) database.  Note: Release 4 adds ODBC interfaces to any text, Sybase, Oracle, Informix, etc., database.

SQL User interfaces: Users may call SQL either interactively or from within scripts; Super fast SQL toolbar for simple queries: any field, any value, with easy operators: =, <>, >, <, >=, <=. Like, Starting with, Ending with; Expert mode SQL Dialog for any valid SQL query.

SQL Reserved Words (quick list of operators, functions, predicates): +, -, *, /, Add, All, Alter, And, Any, As, Asc, Autoincrement, Avg, Between, Binary, Bit, Boolean, By, Byte, Char, Character, Column, Constraint, Count,  Counter, Create, Currency, Database, Date, Datetime, Delete, Desc, Disallow, Distinct, Distinctrow, Double, Drop, Eqv, Exists, Float, Float8, Float4, Foreign, From, General, Group, Having, IEEEDouble, IEEESingle, Ignore, Imp, In, Index, Inner, Insert, Int, Integer, Integer4, Integer1, Integer2, Into, Is, Join, Key, Left, Like, Logical, Long, Longbinary, Longtext, Max, Memo, Min, Mod, Money, Not, Null, Number, Numeric, Oleobject, On, Option, Or, Order, Owneraccess, Parameter, Percent, Pivot, Primary, Procedure, Real, References, Right, Select, Set, Short, Single, Smallint, Some, StDev, StDevP, String, Sum, Table, Text, Time, Timestamp, Top, Transform, Union, Unique, Update, Value, Values, Var, Varbinary, Varchar, VarP, Where, With, Xor, Yesno

Manifold System extends SQL with the following predicates, which may be used within any SQL query:

SQL Manifold Geospatial predicates: Length, Pointcount, RAND, LengthManH, LengthMax, Xorg, Yorg, Xextent, Yextent, Area, Xcenter, YCenter, Distance, Intersect, Allintersect, Contain, Allcontain, Adjacent, Alladjacent.

SQL Manifold Networking predicates: UnattachedNodes, CriticalNodes, CriticalLinks,IncidentLinks, IncidentNodes, AdjacentLinks, AdjacentNodes, Degree, DegreeIn, DegreeOut, DegreeDir, LeafOf, BlockOf, ConnectedSubnetOf, DominanceSet, Connected, Planar, ConnectedSubnet, HasLoop, LinkCutset, NodeCutset, MaximumMatching, AllLinksPath, AllLinksLoop, AllNodesLoop, ShortestLoop, LoopOfLength, BaseLoop, BaseCutset, Diameter

SQL Manifold networking predicates for use with "weighted" networks: SpanningTree, ShortestPath, ShortestPathLength, MinimaxPath, MinimaxPathLength, MinimaxPathValue, PostmanRoute, PostmanRouteLength, SalesmanRoute, SalesmanRouteLength, PartialSalesmanRoute, PartialSalesmanRouteLength, ReachableNodes, MaximalFlow, MaximalFlowValue, SteinerTree

SELECTING OBJECTS AND RECORDS

Manifold allows users to select objects visually with a mouse or through the operation of SQL or solvers.  Selections may be combined in various ways, piped through combinations of solvers, and sent to various destinations automatically.

Selection Controls:  Replace Selection, Add to Selection, Subtract from Selection, Invert with Selection, Move selection to new or existing layer. Select any combination of Areas, Lines or Points; Select by layer; Select object, select all objects entirely within cursor box or circle, select all objects any part of which is within cursor box or circle; Select by SQL toolbar or SQL query; Select by clicking on text output in Results History window.

Solver Output modes controls: Do nothing with result, replace selection with result, add result to selection, subtract result from selection, invert result with selection, move result to new layer, move result to existing layer, move result to active layer, change given field in all objects in result, use results dialog to ask what to do.

SOLVER SCRIPTS

Manifold includes an Edit Scripts menu item under the Solvers main menu: Create new solvers by writing scripts using any ActiveX scripting language such as Visual Basic Scripting (VBScript) or Javascript and intrinsic Manifold functions.  Creating a new script group and script adds it to the pull down menu under "Solvers" in the main menu.

Edit scripts functions: New Group, Delete Group, Rename Group, New Script, Delete Script, Rename Script, Save, Compile, Run, using the built-in editing window.

Click on Thumbnail: Full sized Edit Scripts dialog.  Illustration shows sample script provided as the "List Basics" example.

Solver Scripts Examples: (Provided as scripts sources): Control:  Do, Exit,  IfElse,  Until,   While; Strings: Basics, Searches, Spans, Trims, UpperAndLower, AnsiAndOem; Container Classes: Array Basics, Bubble Sort, Dictionary, List Basics, Queries; Misc: Animation Sequences; Circle Length, DecToBin, Dialog, E-number, Fibonacci Sequence, Flash, Folders, Math Functions, Object Counter, Point Counter, Build Network Map.

INTRINSIC MANIFOLD FUNCTIONS

(For software developers and very advanced users) The following Manifold functions may be utilized within scripts in addition to the usual Visual Basic language constructions.  Virtually any function is accessible to developers or advanced users.  No software development kit or C language programming is required to use the following. SQL may also be invoked from within scripts.

Math and misc: Abs, Ceil, Floor, Sin, SinH, Tan, TanH, Cos, CosH, ArcCos, ArcSin, ArcTan, Sqrt, Exp, Ln, Lg, Pow, Sign, ItoA, DtoA, BtoA, AtoI, AtoD, AtoB

Manifold Runtime: (Sample drawn from over 400 functions) BrowseForFolder, MessageBox, IsMapPresent, GetMapRect, GetObjectCount, GetObjectID, GetObjectFlags, IsObjectPoint, IsObjectLine, IsObjectArea, GetObjectRect, GetObjectIndex, GetObjectPointCount, GetMapName, GetLayerCount, GetLayerName, GetLayerobjectCount, GetLayerObjectFirstPos, GetLayerObjectNextPos, GetLayerObjects, FilterPoints, FilterLines, FilterAreas, FilterObjects, CanEditGeometry, CanEditFields, CanEditLayers, AddObject, AddObjectPoint, ChangeObjectPoint, DelObject, SaveObjects, GetNewID, AddLayer, DelLayer, FindObjectLayer, PutObjectInLayer, DelObjectFromLayer, DelAllObjectsFromLayer, RefreshChangedObjects, RefreshChangedFields, RefreshChangedWorkspace, RefreshAll, GetCurrentLayer, GetMinMaxScale, GetCurScale, SetCurScale, GetMapViewSize, GetTotalMapSize, GetOriginPoint, GetCenterPoint, SetCenterPoint, BackupZoomState, FlushZoomStates, FlushPrevStates, FlushNextStates, GoBack, GoForth, CanGoBack, CanGoForth, ZoomIn, ZoomOut, ZoomToFit, ScrollTo, ScrollBy, GetScrollUnitSize, GetScrollUnitPageSize, GetScrollableSize, Point.CoordsToPixel,   (etc, etc, about 300 more...)

Whew!  All this for only $145 - Wow! Ready to purchase? Visit the Manifold.net Online Store for a quick, easy, and secure purchase of Manifold products.

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