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Chapter 2
Understanding Autodesk MapGuide
What Is Autodesk MapGuide?
Before you use Autodesk MapGuide, you need to understand some basic
concepts, how to use the Autodesk MapGuide product suite as a whole, and
how to access your Autodesk MapGuide Server and data resources.
Autodesk MapGuide is a geographic information system (GIS). Unlike a
typical map or drawing, which shows only spatial data such as roads, cities,
and country borders, a GIS links attribute data such as population statistics
to the spatial data. This link between the map data and the attribute data
makes a GIS very powerful, because it allows you to use data in a whole new
way.
For example, you could create a map of restaurants that allows users to zoom
in to an area of interest, click a restaurant, and then view that restaurant’s
menu, pricing information, phone number, and address. Or you could create
a map of all power transformers in an area, so that your technicians could
quickly generate a report of all customers affected by a particular transformer
when it goes out of service. You could also create a facilities map of your
company, including information about personnel in each office, such as tele-
phone extension, title, department, and so on.
Keep in mind that when you use Autodesk MapGuide, you are not limited to
using geographically projected maps—you can also use drawings, floor plans,
schematics, or others kinds of spatial data.
Understanding Layers
A key feature of Autodesk MapGuide is the use of
layers
. Layers are like sepa-
rate transparent sheets on which different spatial data is drawn. By sepa-
rating data into different layers, you can work with your data more effi-
ciently. For example, if you have a map displaying roads, rivers, and parks,
you could organize the map into three layers for each of these types of
features. Then, when you want to change the color of all of the rivers to blue,
you would change the color for the rivers layer. This would redraw all of the
rivers in blue, without affecting the colors of the parks and roads, which are
on separate layers.
Layers are also useful for your users when they want to select specific data.
For example, if you have highways and streets on individual map layers that
overlap, and the user wants to select a highway, users can turn off the streets
layer so that they can more easily select the highway without accidentally
clicking a street instead.
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