#Street Atlas USA
9 messages in this thread
Jim
That's a feature the Delorme people did not know about at the last Comdex!
I asked the guysd at the booth to show me "all" the features, and they took
quite some time doing so, but never showed the street numbering! Wonder if
it is an "extra" their programmers put in and didn't get around to relling
marketing about. I'll hit on them at Comdex again the week after next!
BTW the new version of Street Atlas sounds like a pretty major upgrade.
Have you seen the docs on it yet?
Ric
Richard,
The new version of Street Atlas is called MapExpert and is indeed a major
upgrade. It has a new spiral bound manual which is quite comprehensive.
Among the new features:
o Printing from within the program – both regular and mural mode
o Extensive annotation capabilities, labels, symbols, etc.
o Support for the Multiple Document Interface of Windows
o Distance measuring
o Linked maps
o Continuous latitude/longitude readout as the cursor moves
o Shows streets as double lines rather than single lines at the highest
magnitude, Level 16; makes maps much easier to read.
o In metropolitan areas, it can search by street block numbers and even
show which addresses are on which side of the street.
All in all, this has to be one of the greatest CD-Rom products available
anywhere.
regards,
Tom
Tom –
Mapexpert sounds pretty impressive. How much will it be? Still Windows
based? If so, this may finally force me to get Windows!
Thanks,
Ollie
Ollie,
Suggest retail for MapExpert is $495…no idea what the street price will
work out to be. As a registered owner of Street Atlas (street price as low
as $77) I was able to buy MapExpert for $295 and thought it was well worth
it. That offer supposedly expired October 2nd but it may have been
extended.
It's still Windows based and runs beautifully under Windows 3.1 using a
800x600x256 desktop.
Tom
I recently spoke with DeLorme regarding Street Atlas and Map Expert. At
this time Map Expert is ONLY available direct from DeLorme. They raised
the suggested retail price on Street Atlas when they went to distribution
and I guess they want all of the $495 for themselves with Map Expert. I
expect to to reviewing Map Expert soon.
You'll enjoy MapExpert, Bruce. I got mine directly from DeLorme as noted.
$495 may seem like a lot but this one's a true original, really unique.
Tom
I've been using Map Expert for a couple of weeks now… it is a very
impresive product. There are a few bugs in the data base, however. One
river near my home has "broken the dyke" and now has flooded several very
square miles of land, at least according to DeLorme. I'm sure many of the
other things I note are just a matter of currency.. DeLorme says data is
generaly 1-5 years old. The street names are often not what you'd want.
Particularly highways where a name and route number are merged. Evidently
in compressing the data base they left out u/l case so Map Expert
capitalizes the first letter of each word.. so you get Se for Southeast
etc.
Can anyone tell me which is the left side of the road and^C
h is the right
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Paul,
As you point out there are minor data base errors here and there in both
Street Atlas and MapExpert. I suppose that's to be expected with over 5
million streets to keep track of. Overall it's amazingly accurate though.
As to which side of the street is the left side and which is the right
side, the rule seems to be that the orientation is correct when you are
facing in the direction of increasing numbers. I've checked many addresses
where I know which side of the street a house is located and the rule
applied in all cases.
There are two ways to get rid of the clutter of street names when checking
block numbers. You can erase all overlay data with the Erase Overlay tool
or you can use the Select Overlay tool to select individual street names or
other overlay items that you want to delete and then just press your
keyboard [Delete] key to get rid of them.
Although I haven't tried importing any maps into other programs for
printing as yet, I suspect that your loss of smaller type items may be due
to no matching printer fonts in WP 5.1 for the screen fonts you were seeing
in the preview. I get all the type when printing to my DeskJet directly
from MapExpert so maybe MapExpert has some built-in fonts that are being
used for printing..just a guess, I don't really know.
What I'd like to see is some improvements in the MapExpert print dialog
box, such as being able to print multiple copies and having it remember
titles and other settings from one printout to the next.
A CD caching utility such as SpeedCache+ really speeds up the operation of
MapExpert. My setup uses a 3mb RAM cache in Windows and MapExpert can do
lots of map work in the same area without having to re-access the CD-Rom
drive.
regards,
Tom
Thanks for your observations, Tom.
Ya, one is inclined to overlook the flaws, considering the incrediably
large size of the data base. It is something that will only get better
with time and new releases.
I had found the same thing about left and right sides of street. It can be
a bit tricky to figureout which way the nubers are increasing..
particularly near the baseline (0 block) if your unfamiliar with the
numbering scheme. I think DeLorme will come up with a better method.
Samething for the street identification.. you should be able to click on
the street and have it display the data at bottom of screen (like it does)
w/o pasting the street name in the overlay. For that matter it would be
nice if it came up in the edit box so one could edit the street name before
it is put in the overlay.. of course we can go back and edit them latter.