V1 Newsletter-Vol. 1, Issue 5

 

PERSPECTIVES

"What's the promise of intelligent 3D models?"

Vector One —"The promise of 3D intelligent models is very high and likely to happen within the next three years in useable forms. This depends of course upon what you mean by ‘intelligent’ models. "

Jeff Thurston, Editor, EMEA and Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Spatial Sustain —"To get to intelligent 3D, the volumetric object-oriented models of the CAD world need to be populated by a rich set of attributes such as in GIS, and stored in a database. Objects are assigned feature classes and database storage means that you can run queries and analyze objects based on their attributes, and based on their location in 3D space."

Matt Ball, Editor, Americas/Asia-Pacific, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

TOP FIVE LINKS OF THE WEEK

Jeff's Top Five Links of the Week:
1) GNOSIS - Archives of three Belgian federal scientific institutes: the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) and the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI).
2) EPSRC - The UK Government's leading funding agency for research and training in engineering and the physical sciences
3) 3D Perception - Manufacturer of 3D visualisation and simulation systems. 
4) Baltic GIS Portal - The Baltic GIS portal is hosted by GIS Group of the Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University, which currently acts as GIS/Data Coordination Center of the Baltic Sea Regional Project (HELCOM ).
5) Book - Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (Paperback)

Matt's Top Five Links of the Week:
1) Virtual Terrain Project (VTP) -- The goal of VTP is to foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form.
2) Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future--Report that outlines the science, technology and policy roadmap for diverse energy development.
3) The Power of Green – Author Thomas L. Friedman's detailed reporting on green technology in the New York Times magazine (includes video).
4) Quantum Shift TV — Sharing the stories of those who positively impact social and environmental change on our planet.
5) Buckminster Fuller Institute -- Dedicated to the sustainability vision of R. Buckminster Fuller.

Reader´s Links of the Week:
Submit suggested links to anything you would like to recommend that fellow readers do, see or read via e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

INTERVIEW

 Interview: Safe Software Fuses More Dimensions

With the continuing convergence of spatial technologies for greater intelligence, one company in particular stands out. Safe Software has long been in the business of moving data with their spatial ETL (extract, transform and load) platform FME. Vector1 Media editor Matt Ball had a conversation with Dale Lutz and Don Murray, co-presidents of Safe Software, about the fusion of spatial data and the promise of 3D.

PRODUCT REVIEW

AUTODESK MAP 3D 2008

AutoCAD Map 3D 2008 is the latest version of the popular engineering GIS program available from Autodesk. This product has been continually refined over the year's with new functionality added each version. This is no exception for 2008 with several new features added to the program that bridge CAD / GIS integration possibilities. 

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