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Mapping the World with Azimuth


mapmaking plug-in for VectorWorks

Azimuth software is designed by a cartographer who makes maps in a design and graphics environment! It is not a typical GIS system -- which can chill an artist's blood - and for good reason. They are generally made for statistical and engineering purposes. Azimuth can do some (a lot) of that, but it excels at making imaginative maps, beautifully designed maps, and do it with enough good cartographic judgement that even artists and designers who have never heard of 'Mercator' can do it - almost automatically! (It's necessary to know how to click on a particular button).

Azimuth is a plug-in to the leading CAD program on the Macintosh - VectorWorks. Though CAD can sound intimidating, VectorWorks as solved that by making "Workspaces" so its interface can be made as simple as MacDraw or as complex as a full, 3D fly-through program. Azimuth takes advantage of that kind of capability with a 'Starter' workspace.

Since Azimuth is a mapmaking plug-in to VectorWorks, it combines graphics capabilities with georeferenced data with great precision. Cartographic settings can be made with one button, which makes sound mapmaking decisions available to the graphics designer and artist. It's easy to produce anything from standard conic maps to spectacular views from space, from any distance and any angle. The manual has beginners mapping in minutes.

Azimuth has a graphic interface -- visible data on a visible DATA Layer. Users generate dramatic topographic plots of the world using Azimuth’s customized topographic bitmaps. Import images to project (TIFs, JPGs, BMPs, Photoshop and more), or import shapefiles with associated attributes.

Custom vector data are composed of complete, closed polygons -- perfect for publications, brochures, magazines. And you can add your own data -- scan paper maps, trace and "Deproject" and objects become new, georeferenced data.

There is also a Great Circle tool-- click and drag from one place to another and the Great Circle appears (with distance). Azimuth uses georeferenced data that is consistent across all documents. Data can simply be copied from one document and copied using the standard 'Copy' command and then pasted exactly in place in another document using the 'Paste in Place' command. This means the data you created for Kansas a year ago can be simply copied and pasted into your new data for Missouri.

Maps are easily exported -- images in all common formats; vectors, symbols and text in editable EPS. PDF manual is supplied.

Azimuth Mapping Software
Also see:
The Nemetscheck Site

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Reviewed by Fred Showker for the User Group Network News Service. (C) 2004, all rights reserved. Affiliate groups may freely republish this piece so long as they include the tag line: "From the User Group Network News Service at http://www.user-groups.net/ "

 

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