Manifold Community Site Area: All posts

Manifold SQL Skill released for AI

Dimitri — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:37:22 GMT

Manifold today has released a Manifold SQL Skill package for use with AI models. It's a free download and is open sourced using the MIT license. The skill is very comprehensive, since it was built directly from the source code and thus covers all Manifold SQL functions and all parts of Manifold SQL syntax, and it was tested very systematically against every snippet of Manifold SQL that appears in the user manual.

If you're spending a few hundred a month for high end models you know they've gotten pretty good at writing Manifold SQL, at least for simple tasks. But even the very best models do much better on complex tasks with the skill installed. If you're working with free tier models or otherwise using simpler models there's no doubt that installing the skill is worth it. The user manual topic has some helpful comments on that.

From the What's New page:

When working with AI models a skill is a folder of instructions, scripts, and resources that a model loads dynamically to improve performance on specialized tasks. The Manifold SQL skill teaches an AI model to write, review, debug, and explain Manifold SQL, the query language of Manifold Release 9 and Manifold Viewer. The skill has been implemented for Anthropic's Claude model but the download also works with little or no modifications for many other popular models such as ChatGPT, Deepseek, Qwen, GLM, and others, either running through the web or installed and running locally.

For complete information see the Manifold SQL Skill user manual topic, including installation instructions for Claude and tips for use with other AI models. Download the skill's zip file from this link.

If you use an AI model to help write Manifold SQL, installing the skill is highly recommended. It helps both in free tier use of models and also paid models, including in agentic settings like Claude Code.

help with creating line labels in manifold 9

menicoll — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:43:16 GMT

I tried to add my first manual line label in Manifold 9.

I followed the instructions in the documentation, and named the labels layer as "Paths Manual Labels".

I entered one label, and I got one record in the "Paths Manual Labels Table", but both the "Paths Manual Labels" and the "Paths Manual Labels Drawing" are blank.

Here is what I see in the Project pane:

Here is the table:

The instructions say: "Drag and drop the new labels component into the map...".

Are not all of the 3 "Paths Manual Labels..." items shown in the Project pane "components"?

If so, which of the 3 should I have dragged onto the map? (I tried each of them.)

As documented, I used the "Create Line" cursor to indicate where I wanted the label.

(It seems odd to me to use the "Create Line" cursor, when I want to create a line label.)

If anyone can suggest where I might have gone wrong, and why no label has appeared, I would be much obliged!

Carrying input table fields into transform outputs

MStiffler — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:12:16 GMT

Hi,

I’m a newer user to Manifold and only really use it for a few specific tasks, so I’m still learning some of the attribute and table functionality.

I’m currently using Watershed > Downstream Lines to generate flow paths from a set of seed points over a prepared DEM. My input seed points contain a unique field called

HydroID

, and I would like each output flow path to retain the

HydroID

of the seed point it was generated from.

I know I can export/use the tables and relate or join the data afterward using

mfd_id

to get the related field information. However, I was wondering if there is a more direct way to carry a field from the input features into the output generated, either as part of the transform itself or within Manifold afterward?

I have some seed points at the same coordinates, so I would prefer to preserve the relationship to the individual input feature rather than relying solely on a spatial or coordinate-based match.

Thanks for any help!

New Build - 9.0.182.6

Dimitri — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 07:12:28 GMT

There's a new build out today - 9.0.182.6. It's about speed, technical conveniences and a handful of bug fixes. Here are the notes from the What's New page (I recommend reading on the What's New page since those are better formatted than the raw notes below).

---

Eye-popping Launch Speed - More VS Code

12 September 2026: Build 9.0.182.6 delivers breath-takingly fast launches and extends use of VS Code to editing Expressions in four new contexts. It also includes a significant mix of technical improvements, everyday conveniences and bug fixes. The new build also includes faster geometry for clipping, the first wave of speed improvements stacked for delivery in near future builds and upgrades of Unicode and ASCII handling in dataports.

Highlights

Lightning fast startup - Manifold Release 9 has always launched very fast but now it launches substantially faster even though now there are more housekeeping tasks and update checks than before. Extensive rework of the launch sequence now delivers eye-popping fast startup, both for Release 9 and Viewer, typically delivering three times faster launches.

Work that was previously done before the main window appeared is now fired off by the system in multiple background threads or is deferred of a few split seconds until it is needed. Nothing about system resources changes in use: all resources are ready by the time they are clicked or called into action.

Edit expressions in VS Code - VS Code integration now extends to expressions, including all settings where expressions are created or edited. Wherever Manifold offers an Edit Expression... button, including Field dialogs reached from the Schema dialog, Contraint dialogs reached from Schema, Expression templates in the Transform pane and the Select pane, the button now has a drop-down menu offering an Edit in VS Code... choice. That choice becomes the button's default until it is changed.

Integration extends deep into the use of Expressions: for example, in a Transform template other than Expression if a template's Value box allows an expression the box's pull-down list now includes an Expression in VS Code choice in addition to the existing Expression choice.

Editing expressions in VS Code works as it does for scripts, queries and comments: the Expression dialog opens with [VS Code] in its title bar, its editing pane mirrors the file read-only, and each save in VS Code appears in the Manifold Expression dialog within a second. The dialog stays usable throughout, so templates can be double-clicked to copy to the clipboard for pasting into VS Code, and closing VS Code editing tabs returns editing to the Manifold dialog. Pressing OK or Cancel ends the session and takes the last saved text with it.

An expression edited from a table's schema has two parts, an expression and its expression context, so both open in VS Code as two documents (tabs). Switching tabs in the Manifold dialog brings the matching document forward in VS Code. Support for editing both the expression and the expression context in VS Code allows writing more efficient expressions that can pass one-time setup, like a function definition or a VALUE statement to the context instead of re-excuting that setup for each record and also allows more compact and understandable expressions that can pass common set up to the context.

A fourth checkbox, Default for expressions, joins the Use VS Code group in Tools - Options. The three existing checkboxes are renamed Default for scripts, Default for queries and Default for comments to match: each now says which editor that kind of component opens in by default, while Use VS Code remains the overall gate that makes the VS Code choice available at all times.

The Use VS Code group in Tools - Options now includes a fourth checkbox, <Default for expressions. The three existing checkboxes have been renamed Default for scripts, Default for queries and Default for comments to match: each now says which editor that kind of component opens in by default.

Use VS Code Gateway - The Use VS Code option in Tools - Options is now the overall gateway to the feature: with it checked, Open in VS Code appears in context menus for scripts, queries, comments and expressions whether or not the individual checkboxes are set. The checkboxes below it now control only the default double-click gesture. Unchecking all four gives VS Code on demand without it ever launching automatically.

Faster Erase Geometry when Editing Drawings - The Erase command (See the Erase topic under Editing) uses areas to erase (remove) geometry in drawings when interactively editing drawings. The function has become substantially faster on layers with many objects, typically between two and twenty times faster depending on the complexity of the erasing area(s). Complex erasing areas will erase over twenty times faster than before. Results are unchanged: the same engine, the same tolerance, the same output, just done much faster.

Convenient Visual Studio Code download - The Tools - Options dialog now shows an Optional, available from code.visualstudio.com prompt with link when VS Code has not yet been installed. A single click opens the VS Code download page, eliminating the need to look up the download page for VS Code.

Indexes for imported tables - A new Add mfd_id and geometry index to imported tables setting in Tools - Options, on by default, gives imported tables the indexes Manifold needs to select, pick and edit records. A table imported without a usable identity, such as a CSV, or a database file whose key Manifold cannot use as one, gains an mfd_id field and its mfd_id_x index, so the table's records can be selected and edited instead of only read. A drawing's table that arrives without a spatial index on its geometry gains an index, which makes the drawing selectable, pickable and editable in a map window. Formats that already supply what is needed, such as SHP, are unchanged.

Where a source file already contains a column named mfd_id, Manifold uses those values as identities if every one is a positive whole number and no two are the same, the case that arises when a table exported from Manifold is imported back. If the values cannot serve as identities, the column is imported under a different name, a fresh identity is generated, and a line in the log window says which table, why, and what the column was renamed to. Every table where anything is added is named in the log, so what happened to an import is always on the record.

Esc cancels a pending new record - In a table window, pressing Esc on a pending new record — the row shown against a violet-blue background — discards it, along with anything typed into its cells. This is the same action as Undo Changes on the row and Ctrl-Backspace. Pressing Esc while editing a cell cancels only that cell, as before. A record that already exists is unaffected: Esc does nothing to an edited existing record, and Ctrl-Backspace remains the way to undo those changes.

Insert Current Datetime - Right-clicking a datetime cell in a table window now offers Insert Current Datetime, which puts the current date and time into that cell. The command sits below Paste in the cell's context menu, and the same command appears in the Info pane's context menu for a datetime value, below its own Paste, so a record can be timestamped from either place. The value is the local date and time at full precision — the same as the SQL DateTimeCurrent function returns — and the field's style decides how much of it is displayed, so a field styled to show only a date still holds the time.

The command works on a new record as well as an existing one: choosing it in the empty last row of a table starts the new record with that timestamp, in the same way that typing into a cell does. It appears only for datetime fields, and does not appear when the value cannot be edited, such as a computed field or a read-only table.

Pasting into a new record - A cell in the empty last row of a table window now accepts Paste from its context menu, starting a new record with the pasted value. Previously the row offered no context menu at all, so a new record could only be begun by typing, even though pasting into an existing record's cell has always worked. Pasting behaves exactly as it does for an existing record, the same conversion of the clipboard's text to the field's type, and the same result when it cannot be converted, the only difference being that the new record is started first.

Log files automatically deleted - Manifold and Manifold Viewer have always written a log file for each session, and until now those files accumulated without limit: an installation used regularly for a few years can hold thousands of them. Both products log to the same folder, so a single Log files to keep setting in Tools - Options, in the System group beside Cache size, governs them together: it trims Manifold's own log files to the most recent hundred by default, whichever product is running. Trimming happens on a background thread shortly after startup, once per session, so it never delays launch, and it removes only files Manifold itself wrote. Anything else in the folder is left alone, as is the current session's log. A hundred sessions is typically several months of history. The setting takes any number, and choosing (all) keeps every log file exactly as earlier builds did.

(Fix) Non-standard VS Code installations - The Manifold SQL extension recon/install logic has been changed to handle the most common forms of non-stock VS Code installations. Manifold installed the Manifold SQL extension for VS Code once per launch on installations that keep extensions outside the standard folder: portable installations, VS Code Insiders, and installations made with package managers such as scoop. Each launch therefore repeated the installation and its notice, and took several seconds. Manifold now records where the extension was installed and does not reinstall it.

(Fix) Manifold Commander query results - manifoldcmd.exe now prints query results to standard output for -runquery, -runqueryfile and --runquerytext without -out, printing the result table through the same shared printer (results previously went nowhere), bounded by a new -limit:xxx option (default 1000, 0 = unlimited) as a header row followed by one tab-delimited line per record, suitable for scripting and comparison. Output is UTF-8.

(Fix) Commander exit code now fixed - manifoldcmd's init-failure exit code is now fixed. It showed an exit 0 on a failed initialisation. It now reports and exits 1 on init failure — including the licence-gate refusal — instead of logging-then-exit-0.

(Fix) Unmangled GeoJSON and JSON - GeoJSON and JSON dataports previously could mangle text depending on its use of Unicode UTF-8 without BOM. Now fixed and text is not mangled.

(Fix) Text file import fixed for UTF-8 without a byte order mark (BOM) - Manifold now correctly reads text files that are encoded in UTF-8 but carry no byte order mark. Previously such files were read as ANSI, so any non-ASCII character was corrupted on import: a non-ASCII language name might arrive as ÐœÐ¾ÑÐºÐ²Ð°. Files without a byte order mark are what most editors and web tools write today, and the GeoJSON specification recommends against using one, so this affected many ordinary files. GeoJSON, JSON, delimited text, server JSON, script files and metadata sidecars are all corrected.

(Fix) CSV dataport unmangled - The CSV dataport could mangle text coming in from a Unicode UTF-8 file without BOM that contained ASCII text with LF line endings instead of CRLF. That has been fixed in a way that also increases the robustness of the auto-detection of different encoding schemes.

(Fix) Delimited text (CSV) import encoding detection fixes - These are two fixes: CSV files encoded in UTF-8 without a byte order mark (BOM) now import correctly, where non-ASCII characters were previously corrupted. Separately, small CSV files containing only ordinary lowercase text could be misdetected as Unicode and were silently destroyed at import, arriving as a single meaningless column with no data. Manifold now requires positive evidence of a Unicode encoding before treating a file as Unicode, so plain text files import as plain text.

(Fix) Fetch Exceptions Fixed - An exception thrown during fetch might not have been surfaced by the Command Window, which could result in a hang in that window's output even though the rest of the GUI still worked. That's now been fixed and the exception is correctly reported with no side effects.

(Fix) Table window errors while reading a table - An error that occurred while a table's records were being read is now reported in the Log. Previously such an error was lost: the table window kept waiting for records that would never arrive, showing an empty row and no explanation. This might have affected any table, including query results, linked data sources and web sources. The Log tab now comes forward when a read error occurs.

(Fix) Collinear overlapping lines now intersect - GeomIntersects and the intersect-based overlay functions now return true for two lines that run along the same path and share part of it, for example two road segments that overlap for part of their length. Previously only lines that crossed each other were reported as intersecting, so overlapping collinear pairs were silently missed, even though GeomTouches reported them and clipping correctly extracted the shared part. This matches the definition given in the Join topic and the behaviour of the equivalent tests on areas, which were already correct.

The change only turns false into true for this one case, so no query returns fewer records than before. Queries over line layers may return more, such as pairs of partly duplicated segments, which is common in road, boundary and utility data. Lines that are identical, or where one runs entirely within the other, remain a containment relationship and are unchanged.

(Fix) Column names with non-ASCII characters - Importing a delimited text file whose column names contain characters outside the system's code page, such as Greek, accented Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, etc., replaced each such character in the column name with a question mark. The data in those columns was imported correctly; only the names were affected. This has been the behavior since delimited text import was written, and appeared only on systems whose code page did not cover the characters used, which is why it went unnoticed for so long. Column names now import as written.

(Fix) Geometry and raster values in query output - manifoldcmd's query commands printed geometry and raster values as <NULL>, whether or not the value was null, because those types have no text form and the printer read the failed conversion as a null value. Geometry cells now print a marker naming what is there, such as <geom area coords:1234 branches:3>, and raster cells one naming the tile's size and pixel type. Null values still print <NULL>, so a null and a non-null value are no longer indistinguishable. To print geometry itself, use GeomWkt in the query.

M9 Tile Filter Issue in Recent Builds

rvrsabbs — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 06:17:14 GMT

I thought I should quickly mention this in light of the new build this weekend in case this can be fixed.

In recent builds (182.0 on) the built in Filter function fails. There is a small raster attached. Using Filter count or sum on r=1, square, does not work as it should.

I note that the same filter criteria work fine on Manifold (Viewer) version 9.0.181.0 (but not the current 182.5 Viewer or full product on the same machine).

Interested to see if others can reproduce the error before I report it just in case there is a fault in my system or user error.

Thanks

Attachments:
test.map

WMTS

wvayens — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:44:09 GMT

I have found these aerial images provided by my county. I import them into Manifold as WMTS and can see the various data sources, but have no idea how to actually display them (if I can). Any suggestions would be appreciated !

https://svc.pictometry.com/Image/A7128C2F-9998-2CD2-75EA-5B0534C77C16/wmts

New build this weekend - Collecting requests for a new File - Info feature

Dimitri — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:22:08 GMT

There's a new build coming out this weekend (yay!) with a variety of features, some bugfixes, etc.

One of the new features is a File - Info dialog prompted by a user suggestion that reports the project's full path, size, and last-saved date. What else would you find useful in it? (Component counts by type? Data size breakdown? ... etc.) There are a couple of days left before the weekend so we can squeak a few requests in.

If you have an idea and miss this weekend's release, there's another build coming up in 2-3 weeks.

AI user experience

jsperr — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:30:21 GMT

I had my first go at using AI for some useful work this past weekend.

Tax Commitment pdf files seem to be deliberately constructed / formatted to thwart easy conversion, import and use of their data content.

I asked Gemini to extract the data from the Brooklin Maine book into a csv file -- it did so without complaint and quite quickly and nicely but repeated uploads and inspection of the output showed only 45 or so records. I kept asking for the whole file of just over a thousand records and finally it told me the input routine was failing and delivering blank pages after a short time. Gemini asked me to break it into parts, submit them as individual requests, and it would then assemble them for me and add some extras like a ready to geocode address field. That did not work -- the assembled output could not be coaxed beyond 50 records. This morning, I tried again and the history of my thread and account disappeared.

I turned to Claude this morning and made the same request. In about 5 minutes I had my CSV of a thousand plus records. There was less chatty dialog and offers to help with further analysis than Gemini, but it got the job done without complaint or any issues. I imported it into Manifold 9 and am now ready to start building out my little project. All the public and private parcel spatial data applications here seem to using 15 or more years old data -- I want to build a Manifold Viewer for the Blue Hill Peninsula that offers more up to date information.

import ..gpkg in M

cassini — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:15:13 GMT

Hello everyone,

I'm still working with Manifold 8; I never get tired of it :-)

I was wondering if it's possible to import files in .gpkg format?

Thanks for your reply.

How to know if GPU is working ?

vincent — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:46:35 GMT

Hi, my computer is equiped with a GPU but I don't remember seeing it working in the Windows monitoring window. I'm processing a lot of TWI tiles and everything takes hours or days to compute.

I would like to know a process that I can apply to know if my GPU card is working or not.

Data are here, if you want to test with it :

https://www.donneesquebec.ca/recherche/dataset/indice-humidite-topographique-issu-du-lidar/resource/fc6c2bfb-355a-42e0-9fce-9a4f07da350d

I merged 800+ of these dataset. Now I'm doing a conversion to 32 float with the Copy tranform. It is running for more than 22 hours.

Graphic card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. Computer has 32 Go of RAM.

Thank you !

New Build - 9.0.182.5

Dimitri — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 07:47:34 GMT

There's a new build out today: 9.0.182.5. This one introduces two significant and much requested enhancements for people who work with scripts and queries.

The first big enhancement is integrated support for Visual Studio Code ("VS Code" or just "Code") as an optional default editor for scripts, queries and comments. VS Code is a free download. It's a non-trivial integration with dynamic back and forth between Code and Manifold. So, for example, you can edit in Code and in Manifold run the updated script or query without closing Code. I personally prefer to work with Code and Manifold using two monitors but you can easily do it with one monitor.

The second big enhancement is a huge extension for VS Code for Manifold SQL, which goes far beyond syntax highlighting to include auto-completion and templates for about 950 Manifold SQL functions. Manifold includes that extension and will automatically install it so there's no need to download anything or mess with an installation.

VS Code as well as the Manifold SQL extension for Code also is part of Viewer. Viewer doesn't do scripting but you can use Code and the extension with queries. In both 9 and Viewer you can choose if Code is the default for comments or not, so you can use Code with scripts and queries and continue using the built in editor for comments if that's what you prefer.

There are also a couple of other new features such as coincident editing and an eyedropper tool built into the new Colors dialog, and a few new Table style presets for Boolean and Datetime (finally... more international styles...) fields.

See details and a few screenshots on the What's New page. The user manual will be updated later today and then over the next few days with some new topics.

Quite likely late this week or early next there will be another very useful item to help write SQL queries. Stay tuned!

Cannot parse expression for ...

LeRepère — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:38:35 GMT

Hi!

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm misunderstanding something, but I can't copy and paste a table that contains an Expression field. The following message appears: “Cannot parse expression for ‘Field’”. This is the first time I've tried pasting a table like this.

Is this a bug or am I using it incorrectly? I'm using version 9.0.182.4.

Looking for Manifold 9 users to test a new map publishing platform

Sloots — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:05:45 GMT

I have been developing MPPNG — Manifold Publishing Platform: Next Generation, a service for publishing Manifold 9 maps online without configuring your own web server or building a separate web application.

The idea is simple: upload a Manifold project, select the map or drawing you want to publish, and share the resulting interactive web map with clients, colleagues, or the public using one link. Viewers open the map in their browser and do not need Manifold installed.

Published maps can include layer controls, feature information, measurement tools, location search, Street View, saved views and other web mapping tools. Projects can be private, unlisted or public. MPPNG also supports Manifold projects connected to external databases such as PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

I am looking for a small group of Manifold 9 users who would be willing to test the platform with real, non-confidential projects and provide honest feedback.

Testers will receive:

Two months of free Professional access
No credit card requirement
Direct help with setting up the first project
An opportunity to influence features and improvements
Access to the early-bird price if they decide to continue afterwards

In return, I would particularly appreciate feedback about:

The upload and project configuration workflow
Compatibility with different Manifold projects
Map performance and reliability
Sharing maps with clients or other viewers
Missing features or unclear instructions
Any errors or unexpected behaviour

MPPNG is an independent service and is not affiliated with Manifold Software Limited.

If you are interested, please send me an email (support [at] mppng [dot] nl). I would initially like to work with approximately three to five testers so I can give each person proper support.

setting a column name as a VALUE in SQL

artlembo — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:47:40 GMT

Using VALUE is really valuable (no pun intended!!). For example:

VALUE @inTable TABLE = [FAO Soils];

VALUE @clipTable TABLE = [Ecological Regions];

that allows us to have two tables defined (@inTable, @clipTable). But, the next thing I'd like to do it assign a variable to a column so that I can perhaps issue an SQL query based on the variables:

VALUE @inTableGeom nvarchar = 'Geom';

VALUE @inTableZone nvarchar = 'USDA';

this of course doesn't work, but imagine if it did. I might be able to write something like:

SELECT @inTableZone FROM @inTable

At the moment, I don't think we can assign a column name to a VALUE in SQL.

Calling Python modules from Manifold IronPython

artlembo — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:26:23 GMT

I’ve been making really good use of geopy (thing like censusgeocoder) in both a standard IDLE interface, and also integrating these modules with Arcpy.

Does anyone have the steps necessary to use ironpython inside of manifold to import modules like censusgeocode?

For ArcGIS, I do a pip install censusgeocoder into the site-packages folder in my ArcGIS Pro path.

So what I’m trying to figure out is how to install the package with IronPython, and where the package should be installed. Do we need a site–packages folder inside Manifold’s extra folder? I’ve go IronPython 3.7 and copied the .dlls into the extras folder.

New Build - 9.0.182.4

Dimitri — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:52:00 GMT

A big new build was issued today. This one is a "must" have with features like Style pane history and some other biggies, like a slippy, mobile website for the HTTP server. Next build should be around 16 August. Here's the announcement from the What's New page (easier to read with an illustration on that page):

Undo / Redo Styles + Much More

26 July 2026: Build 9.0.182.4 delivers several big, important features that improve workflow and provide better quality of life in GIS work: Style history with Back and Forward arrows, Layer reveal, a spectacular new Mobile and Slippy enabled web site, Word wrap in Comments windows, Slippy layout frames, Move all selected objects when editing geometry, new North arrows designed for mobile use, a shortcut to the Colors dialog, and PostgreSQL 18.4 support.

In addition to major new features the build provides a variety of small features and a few fixes. As always with Cutting Edge builds, users are advised to retain a backup copy of prior builds in case they would like to revert to an earlier build. The following release notes are preliminary information: documentation has yet to be updated.

Highlights

** Style Pane history with Back/Forward - Back and Forward arrows have been added to the Style pane. The Style pane now tracks the history of all Style changes made on a per-component basis (drawings, labels, images, layouts), allowing multistep Undo (Back arrow) and multistep Redo (Forward arrow). A new mfd_style table appears in the System Data folder and records all style changes made for a project. Back and Forward arrows allow stepping through the Style history for each individual component. Deleting a component deletes its entries in the mfd_style table. History is remembered across Manifold sessions: open a project six months later and the Style history will still be there if you want to revert style on a component back to what it was before changes were made.

** Layer reveal - This feature allows you to "peel back" any layer partially to see what is underneath. It's analogous to how Preview work: right click on a layer's tab in the tabstrip at the bottom of a window and choose Full (no reveal), Left (show the layer on the left side of the window and reveal what is below on the right side of the window) or Right (the other way around). A thin, vertical seam line appears with handles at the top and bottom borders of the window. Drag the seam line or the handles left and right to increase or decrease the proportion of the window in which layer reveal shows layers below the reveal layer. Layer reveal works with any layer in a stack and not just the topmost layer. With reveal on for a layer you can click layers on and off or change their opacity in the Layers pane. Layer reveal honors layer opacity settings, automatically negates occlusion culling, allows panning and zooming while in reveal mode, and automatically switches to Full when a higher layer is clicked on or when the current topmost layer is clicked off. Layer reveal works with drawings, images, and layers layers, including imageserver and other externally-served layers. If the reveal layer is a labels layer as you drag the seam line left and right and the reveal moves past labels it is fascinating to watch labels go partial and then flick out of or into existance. Composite layer tabs (a single tab for a folder of layers within the Layers pane) also work with Layer reveal: the multiple layers within the tab are peeled back at the same time for a multi-layer reveal. Amazing!

** New! Mobile, Slippy Web Site by Default - Manifold's HTTP web map server now serves a modern, mobile-native slippy map by default. The new web site is fully responsive for mobile/telephone browsers: It autosizes, adapts to high resolution phone displays and autorotates when phone rotates. It understands gestures: Tap with a finger to get info on a feature (by default the site lists info for all coincident features), double-tap to zoom, pan with a single finger or double finger gesture, and use pinch gestures to zoom. The site applies canvas/smooth zoom technology. Controls are placed by default in a thumb-friendly location with command line launching options to move controls to the left or right side of the display. Other options allow the map/website designer to add North Arrow, Scale Bar, Legend and Grid accessories in a way that they're available but a user can opt-in to see them via the Layers button. Options and notes:

-legacy - Option to use the prior, non-slippy default site.

-buttons:tl - or with :tr, :l, :r, :bl, or :br, a positioning option to place the column of control buttons on the display, respectively top left, top right, left center, right center, bottom left or bottom right. An invalid option will cause placement to fall back to the right-center position. Panes for control buttons open inward from the display border.

-extrasoff - Any decorations (North arrows, scalebars, legends, grids) in the source map will initially be hidden and will appear in the Layers button unchecked. Checking a decoration in the Layers button will display it. This option allows site designers to provide, say, a North arrow for those users who want one but have it off by default.

Info cards stay clear of controls - When an info card pops open when a feature is tapped, a 60 pixel clamp keeps the card clear of any control buttons.

Decorations listed in the Layers button - Unlike the prior site, decorations (North arrows, scalebars, legends, grids) in the source map are listed in the Layers pane and can be checked off and on as desired.

** Info cards compatible with legacy site - On a single tap (phone) or click (desktop) the slippy web site defaults to same Info handling as the legacy site, providing info for the tapped/clicked object from the topmost layer that is visible and pickable. Note that the topmost layer may change if the map designer has arranged for layers to turn off and on depending on zoom level - the Info handling takes that into account. A tap/click pops open an "Info card" (a small pane) with information from the fields for the tapped/clicked object, by default using the same logic as the legacy site so legacy sites will work by default with the new slippy interface. The info card popped up by the slippy version provides the name of the layer which has been queried by a tap/click in boldface at the top of the info card. If the layers pane is used to turn off the topmost layer, the tap/click will report from the new topmost visible layer. To report info from all objects that are coincident within all visible/pickable layers on a tap/click, add the -allinfo flag to the server command line.

** Improved messaging for the legacy web site - The legacy HTTP site has been edited to provide more understandable prompts and messages:

Named layers - The Info button combo box in the pull down menu now names the layer in use (replacing an uninformative "auto").

No Info is not No Data - When clicking the Info tool on an object in a layer other than the topmost (or specified) layer or on no object a "No info in specified layer" message appears instead of a generic "No Data" message.

No fields? No Info - When clicking the Info tool on an object in the specified layer that has no data in its fields a "No info" message appears instead of a generic "No Data" message.

** At last! Word wrap in Comments Windows - Right-click in a Comments window and choose Word Wrap from the context menu to wrap long lines to fit within the window. The Right-to-left choice toggles settings when using Right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew. Settings are remembered per component.

** Conversion of line endings - When copying and pasting text into Manifold windows, Comments, Script and Location windows now normalize non-Windows (web, Linux, etc) line endings into Windows style endings. This avoids run-together paragraphs and weird double spacing when copying text from web sites and pasting into Manifold windows.

** Slippy Zoom - Slippy zoom has been added to map windows (maps, drawings, images, labels) for wheel zoom. This is for zoom out (zoom in by definition uses only those regions already on display) and is useful for relatively small zooms, about one window's size outwards. When zooming out past the slippy overscan region non-slippy zoom takes over.

** Slippy Layout Frames - Frames within layouts when enabled for panning / zooming (double-click on the frame) now use slippy pan and also slippy zoom just like map windows.

** Move all Selected Objects - When editing an object, ALT-drag will move that object's vertices and also all vertices of all selected objects in the layer. That provides a way to move a picked object (or some of its vertices) and also moving all selected objects at the same time. The feature issues a message (which is localizable) to the status bar to alert the user that the ALT-drag will move / has moved selected objects, for example, 12 selected object(s) will move when changes are saved and moved 12 selected object(s). The wireframe previews of objects that are moved use blue preview color for the wireframe of the picked object and violet selection + preview color for the wireframes of any selected objects also being moved, taking the colors from those specified in the Tools - Options dialog, Colors tab.

** North Arrow dialog redesign - The North Arrow dialog has been redesigned to add a Center-N option. The Center-N option (enabled when the Text option to add N, E, S, W labels is on) removes any E, S, W text labels and uses only the N text label, drawing it in the center of the North Arrow shape on top of the North Arrow, and optionally surrounding it with a circle or rectangle box with the given padding. The Center-N option allows creating a new look from existing North Arrow shapes.

** 22 new North arrows - 22 new North Arrow symbols have been added to the North Arrow dialog's gallery. These are very simple shapes designed to work well with the new Center N option and are especially aimed at mobile devices as well as desktop maps where a simple, clean style is desired. A few in particular work outstandingly well to provide a modern, clean style on telephones. The illustration near the top of this pages shows the new

** Easy Schema Copies - A Copy button has been added to the Schema dialog's toolbar. Either the button or Ctrl-C copies to the Clipboard all selected rows that are visible, ignoring any selected rows that are hidden as a result of text matching in the filter box. Pasting from that copy works like paste of rows copied from a Table window: The first row that is pasted provides five field names - Category, Name, Type, Expression, and Attributes - that are separated by tabs. Subsequent rows provide values from the Schema dialog also separated by tabs. Note that in the Schema dialog the first field, Category, is indicated by an icon (which could indicate a field, computed field, index or constraint) in the dialog. The last field, Attribute, likewise is indicated by one or more icons in the Schema dialog (that symbolize Indexed, Indexed (secondary), Projection, Projection (Invalid) and Key). Multiple attributes within the same field are separated by a comma followed by a space.

** Teleport into More... - A SHIFT-click on color wells throughout the system will now directly launch the Colors dialog without need of choosing More... in a pop-up menu. This extends the shortcut added to colors wells within the Style pane to many dozens of other settings within the system. The Apply button in the Colors dialog now also works to push the current color up to the calling dialog wherever applicable, for example, updating the Preview pane in Area, Line and Point Style dialogs.

** Compact is better than Collapse - The Expand / Collapse button in the Colors dialog has been renamed to Expand / Compact to avoid unintended translations of "Collapse" by automatic translation engines when doing localizations.

** No more watermark - The manifold.net watermark has been removed from both the legacy web site as well as the new slippy web site for all license levels that include an HTTP server.

** PostgreSQL Update - PostgreSQL support within the system and the optional open source .dll file has been updated to version 18.4, including new version 18.4 client files and updated PostgreSQL user manual topics that now illustrate v18.4 and Windows 11.

** "Beta" designation dropped for Cutting Edge builds - Users have long treated Edge builds as full releases with no sense of them being beta builds, so the "Beta" tagged onto their build designation in the Log window and other settings has been dropped.

** Plus builds dropped - Instead of bundling multi-hundred megabyte grid files with optional open source .dll files in a huge "plus" build, Manifold builds are now distributed as both .exe Windows Installer installations or .zip portable installations, with huge grid files and optional .dll files in downloadable .zip packages.

** Adios ALT-drag - An ALT-drag no longer pans map windows. This was an undocumented option (everyone uses a simple drag to pan map windows), but ALT-drag has been retired to clear the way for an ALT-drag to be used unambiguously when editing geometry to move all selected objects.

** (Fix) Not a bug but poor GUI design - The Delete button in the Schema dialog would delete all selected rows, even those rows that were hidden by a text entry into the filter box. That's technically correct behavior but it could surprise a user that rows which were not displayed could have been deleted. The Delete button now follows the same protocol as the new Copy button: it only deletes those selected rows that are also visible, ignoring any selected rows that are hidden by the filter box.

** (Fix) Not a bug but possibly confusing - The Update Style button in the Style pane is now hidden when it has no function.

** (Fix) Fractional-seed truncation fixed in the query engine - Due to an incorrect fractional-seed truncation, in some cases an index seek might disagree with a scan path. This is an unlikely issue arising from structuring during query planning vs. execution that has never been observed in the field or during testing but was found during query engine optimization work. It has now been fixed.

** (Fix) Esc to Cancel - In the Colors pane, when the dialog is first launched before any action is taken a press of the Esc key should close the dialog, the same as pressing Cancel. That did not happen: the correct function now has been restored.

** (Fix) Hex sync - Swapping alpha meaning in the Colors dialog in prior builds desyncronized the hex readout combo control from the hex readout in the current color control. That's been fixed and they are now in sync.

** (Fix) BGR/HSV round trips drifting - Round trips between setting HSV values and BGR values in the Colors dialog could accumulate drift and be off by 1 for a parameter, for example, 127 instead of 128. Now fixed.

** (Fix) Border dragged with frame - Within a Layout window, during a pan inside a double-clicked frame that had a thick border, the frame's border could momentarily drag along with the contents before snapping back to its correct position on release. Thick border frames are now locked into position and are not dragged with the contents.

** (Fix) Page panned instead of frame - Within a Layout window, during a pan inside a double-clicked frame that had a thick border, clicking and dragging within the right border, the bottom border, or the outer rings could pan the Layout page instead of the frame. Now, clicking and dragging anywhere on the thick border will pan the frame on all four sides and all four corners.

** (Fix) Borders on top - Frame borders within layouts are now drawn on top of the frame contents. That ensures a border is never overlapped by contents and is always visible, including on a 0 padding, fully occupied frame, both on screen and in printed versions.

Using Man v 8 Image servers

Rakau — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 03:34:27 GMT

I fired up Man v8 today, after sitting unused past couple of years, When trying to link the image server I get an error message that I have no image servers installed.

My version is 8.0.35.0 (10 jan 2023)

Do I have to install the 32bit version to get the mage servers working, or is there a magic trick to get them activated?

mfd9 doc table of contents not optimal for robots

rk — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:12:01 GMT

I was preparing Claude skill for "Manifold 9 SQL" and it complained about https://manifold.net/doc/mfd9/index.htm that:

the
index.htm
you gave me is blocked to robots, so a skill shouldn't rely on the table of contents.

I know from past experience (when Radian first appeared) that it is not trivial to get a whole list of topic links from the TOC. One must hunt the TOC tree for whlstt*.htm files.

Claude found https://manifold.net/doc/mfd9/sql.htm as a useful "hub" of links.

I think I'm not blocked, but perhaps something to consider.

Query problem

espinello — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 04:12:41 GMT

I'm hoping someone can help with this question. This probably has a simple answer but it seems to have me stumped. If I use t.* and b.*, the query runs properly. Similarly, if I specify fields for both tables, all is well. The problem starts when I combine t.* with specified fields for b. Given the number of fields in the first table and the fact that they may change over time, I would prefer not to have to specify them all, but is this a Manifold SQL limitation and, if so is there a workaround?

SELECT

t.*, b.[Field 1], b.[Field 2], b.[Field 3] INTO [ResultTable] FROM [Table1] AS t LEFT JOIN [Table2] AS b ON t.[GEOID] = b.[GEOID];

Huge speed differences when writing to PostgreSQL

rk — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:53:07 GMT

I stumbled on an interesting case.

I knew before that copy-pasting entire table from Manifold to PostgreSQL is much quicker than copying rows from Manifold table and pasting into a pre-existing PostgreSQL table. One uses COPY and the other INSERT-s.

But that was not the full story.

1. First, I copied a table to PostgreSQL afresh. I did not think of the time it took. (It wasn't great)

2. I needed to clear and refill the same table. I chose copy-rows/paste-rows. This was horribly slow. I needed to investigate.

3. Claude Opus picked up what probably caused the slowness

per row commits
PostgreSQL configured with `synchronous_commit = on`

slow storage

Wait event == IO: WALSync - That indicates the backend is blocked in fsync()/fdatasunc() on the WAL, which is what a COMMIT does.
Transaction start time == Query start time - That indicates every row is its own autocommit transaction.
So you're paying one durable disk flush per row, and that flush is taking tens of milliseconds (later measured 104 ms).

4. I had forgotten about Asynchronous commit. I have set `synchronous_commit = off` for another database before. It was easy to change here too and it helped a lot, but the storage story was still very interesting.

5. Claude suggested a command `pg_test_fsync -f /path/to/pg_wal/testfile`. That revealed a situation

worse than guessed: fdatasync on WAL is 9.6 ops/sec — 104 ms per flush. Non-synced writes run at 2.5M ops/sec, so the storage isn't slow, only durable writes are.

6. Claude asked for device model and replied

your PG volume is on a Samsung 870 QVO. The QVO is arguably the worst consumer SSD ever made for a database for 2 reasons:
No power-loss protection.
QLC.

and cited 2 sources:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/samsung-870-qvo-1tb-terrible-write-performance.82026/

Without capacitors, the drive can't acknowledge a FLUSH until the data is physically in NAND. The drive lacks power loss protection, so sync writes can't be considered complete until they're genuinely on media — and that's slow.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-870-qvo-1-tb/6.html

"physically in NAND" means writing to QLC cells. TechPowerUp found that once the 870 QVO's SLC cache is exhausted, transfer rates collapse to under 100 MB/s — slower than most hard drives — and called it the slowest SSD they had ever tested.

7. The fix for me (besides `ALTER SYSTEM SET synchronous_commit = off;` ) was to use nvme 970 EVO Plus (2TB vs 8TB QVO vs 0.5TB database) that was also present on the machine.

The wild speed differences are shown below. In summary, any COPY wins INSERT-s, but some INSERTS are close and others definitely aren't.

Attachments:
time_COPY_n_INSERT_w_Manifold9_n_PostgreSQL.png

New Build - 9.0.182.2

Dimitri — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:59:18 GMT

There's a new build out for July 4: 9.0.182.2

Technically, it is a cutting edge build but it's also replaced the prior 9.0.182.1 base build on the downloads pages for both Release 9 and Viewer.

Build 182.2 introduces a next generation rendering system for map windows (including windows for Maps, Drawings, Images and Labels) that provides "slippy pan", the ability to pan a window with new pixels smoothly replacing those being panned offscreen. This is an essential feature for aligning features interactively when panning. This thread would be a good place to discuss slippy pan effects as there is continued development work on the feature with additional optimizations planned for the next build (2-3 weeks). There's a Tools - Options toggle for turning on slippy pan diagnostics in the Log window that should be used for any reports. If you can reproduce a puzzling phenomenon, turn on the diagnostics toggle, reproduce the phenomenon, and then copy the relevant lines from the Log window to file as part of your report. Note that slippy pan is turned on only for map windows (drawings, images, labels, and, of course, maps). It is not yet turned on for in-frame panning within layouts.

The Colors dialog has two notable additions that have been big wins with alpha testers: an Apply button that lets you see how changes made work in the subject window without leaving the dialog, and a Hue / Value slider swap that makes it easy to stay in Collapsed mode for a compact dialog if you prefer H/S mode (Microsoft style) for your primary control.

The new build also fixes a number of bugs, some of which were truly exotic and very rare. A few have never been observed but were only detected through automated test suites that ran hundreds of thousands of Monte Carlo simulations on edge cases that normal use quite likely would never encounter.

The next build is scheduled for 26 July 2026, but it may be issued sooner. Quite likely the differentiation into Base builds and Edge builds will be dropped for that release, with simply each build being issued both in a Windows Installer .exe version and a Portable .zip version. Plus builds are also likely to be dropped with the "plus" extras being issued as a .zip file anybody can download and unzip into their extras folder. If anybody really needs a separate "plus" build, please speak up.

Following are initial release notes for build 9.0.182.2:

NEW FEATURES

* Slippy pan - Provides seamless, smooth panning. Previously, panning the display within a window moved the rendered rectangle for that display with blank margins filling in the regions left behind as the rectangle moved. With slippy pan there's an automatic overscan so regions outside the window viewport have already been rendered: when a click-and-drag mouse motion pans the view fully rendered pixels seamlessly and smoothly move into view from outside the viewport. It's still possible to pan so fast that screen rendering can't keep up with pan motion, in which case the system uses the previous default behavior. However, the new feature uses a variety of strategies to optimize pre-rendering so that when working with very large data where rendering and pre-rendering may take noticeable time those buffers that are most likely to be needed get pre-rendered first. Note: Keep in mind that slippy pan cannot make slow data sources fast. It still takes some time from slow sources (or from those which require a lot of compute time on slow machines) to fill in. Those will take longer to populate the overscan buffer that enables slippy pan effects. If you jump to a new location in a map with slow layers or on a slower machine and then immediately pan, the display will fall back to looking as it has in prior builds, where panning the view will bring as-yet unrendered margin into view. But in most cases for typical work (that is, not artificially frantic testing) given the speed of Manifold rendering the effect is seamless and smooth.

* Now it's "Colors" - The name of the Select Colors dialog has been changed to "Colors." This avoids semantic conflicts with the "select" word in various translations to mean "selection" in the Manifold sense. default.ui.txt has been updated: Localization files should also be updated.

* Alpha inverted - The meaning of Alpha in the Colors dialog has been inverted to align with the emerging consensus in desktop applications. An Alpha of 255 is now fully opaque, with an accompanying inversion of the gradient displayed in the vertical Alpha slider. Internal alpha handling remands unchanged.

* Automatic control swaps - The Colors dialog automatically reconfigures between S/V and H/S primary displays to swap the H and V sliders so that in H/S mode the vertical slider is V (Value) and in S/V mode the vertical slider is H (Hue). That makes it possible to do full color selection in H/S mode even when the Colors dialog is collapsed to a smaller size. In prior builds with H/S mode on it was possible to pick Hue and Saturation directly from the large panel but to set Value the dialog had to be expanded to show the Value slider.

* At last, Apply - An Apply button has been added to the Colors dialog. This allows applying the chosen color to see how it looks in the target component without leaving the dialog.

* We want More... - SHIFT-clicking on a color well or a button in the Style pane jumps immediately to the More..., larger dialog if there is one for that item. Simple settings like size or rotation that don't have a More... option treat a SHIFT-click the same as a regular click with no SHIFT modifier.

* Checkerboards for more dialogs - The North Arrow, Scale Bar, Legend, and Grid dialogs used by the Layers pane and in Layouts have been upgraded with checkerboard backgrounds to preview panels to better show partially transparent colors. Checkerboard backgrounds have also been added to Total Style dialogs used in various Info Pane - Style tab contexts.

* Server hardened - Manifold Server has been significantly hardened against various attacks. There were no security issues involved with prior builds but the new hardening removes the possibility of performance loss from denial of service and similar attacks.

* HTTP homelayer - A -homelayer option has been added to the HTTP server in Manifold server. The new option in the form -homelayer:component_name sets the component whose bounding box will be used for the initial view displayed by the default web page and for the view used by the Zoom to Fit button in the default web page. This makes it possible to create maps for use by the web server that may use very large layers even though the focus for the web site is a smaller area. For example, as matter of convenience a vector map showing features for an entire state can be used as a layer when the interest is just real estate offerings in a single town, and if the offerings drawing is specified by -homelayer the web site will launch showing the offerings layer and will not launch by showing the entire state. If the specified component does not exit or has invalid bounds, the system uses default behavior of zooming to the union of bounding boxes for non-web layers. Note that the union of all components having the same leaf name is used: Roads bounds are unioned with [Source]::[Roads] bounds. To use only one layer, give it a unique leaf name. In that example, using -homelayer:Roads will set the initial view the Zoom to Fit result, default /map//info bounds and also OGC WMS bounds.

* Absolute or relative, your choice - References to DLLs in queries can now refer to the DLL using an absolute path or relative path. The prior system limited DLL placement to one of three root locations: 1. Install folder — directory of the running executable/DLL, 2. Common app data — C:\ProgramData\Manifold\v9.0, or 3. Local app data — %LOCALAPPDATA%\Manifold\v9.0 with the system searching recursively through subfolders of the above in 1, 2, 3 order to find the named .dll. The system now accepts absolute paths in the form C:\folder\file.dll or c:/folder/file.dll (it must have a / or \ after the c: drive designator). It also accepts relative paths like ~\folder\file.dll or ~/folder/file.dll where the root for ~ follows the default root order 1→2→3 specified above, first hit wins.

* Synchronized to SCM - The Manage Services dialog has had a variety of small refinements done to ensure it always is synchronized to Windows Services Control Manager (SCM) truth. After adding a new service the row cursor stays on that new service. The cursor stays on the service that is being worked on (run, stop, edit, etc.) instead of jumping to the top of the display. New services appear immediately in their

correct alphabetic order instead of requiring a Refresh or other action to jump to the correct location. A failed delete immediately shows services as stopped or stopping with no manual Refresh needed. Internal hardening has been added against various possible unexpected SCM states.

* Options refurb - The Tools - Options dialog has been redesigned slightly to eliminate redundant headings.

* Slippy options - Options settings to toggle Slippy pan and Slippy diagnostics have added to Tools - Options dialog. Slippy pan is ON by default. Slippy diagnostics, written to the Log window, are OFF by default but can be turned ON to see what's going on during Slippy pan.

* Info - A new File - Info dialog provides the .map project file's full path, the size on disk and the last-saved date. The dialog uses Manifold's grid control to provide features like one-click Copy of the info.

* Copy buttons for all - A Copy button has been added to the toolbar of all dialogs that use Manifold's grid control. This enables copying of multiple, selected rows to the clipboard.

* More GDAL - This build extends GDAL support to version 3.13.x plus GISInternals builds (which use a generic, unversioned gdal.dll nomenclature). GISInternals GDAL distributions, currently at the 3.12.x level, are convenient because they can be easily installed with a single winget install command in PowerShell followed by a few quick updates to PATH settings.

FIXES

* (Fix) No black flash in the pan - The build quietly fixes a long-standing black-flash-on-rapid-pan bug (a completely different phenomenon from black rectangle blanking) that existed but was never reported in prior builds. It was discovered during slippy pan work but is independent of slippy pan.

* (Fix) Transparency in colors works correctly in palette intervals - The bug affected use of partially transparent colors in thematic formatting. In prior builds when alpha values in colors were more transparent than halfway transparent (50% Opacity) the color could be rendered black with no transparency. The fix ensures all alpha values are rendered accurately.

* (Fix) No extra Unicode characters from SPLIT COLLECT - A query using SPLIT COLLECT constructions could add extraneous Unicode characters to field names.

* (Fix) Application.CreateTable() issue - Application.CreateTable() could work in a script but return NULL when the script became a dll. Now fixed.

* (Fix) No garbage characters in labels from MapInfo imports - Imports of some MapInfo .tab files producing varchar text fields could show garbage characters after the text when those text fields were used to create labels. This bug involved an issue in the dataport as well as in a downstream module. The fix hardens the downstream module against similar issues that might arise in the future from any new dataports.

* (Fix) JOINs on a TILE column no longer throw "Invalid Field" errors - Previously, a JOIN with a TILE column would throw an "Invalid field" error when the TILE table was on the right side of the JOIN. This was a deep bug going back to early builds and is now fixed.

* (Fix) The HTTP server correctly renders BTREE-pyramid images - BTREE-pyramid (JP2-imported) images failed to render in the HTTP server web map and WMS server. They now render correctly.

* (Fix) 0 bounds now display in HTTP server displays - In prior builds, a map consisting of a single component that has a bounding coordinate exactly equal to 0 would not appear in the web interface created by HTTP server. This bug usually manifested itself with non-nongeographic images (scanned blueprints, etc) which were imported into a project and assigned Pseudo-Mercator or some other convenient projection. The edge of such an image in Pseudo-Mercator is aligned to the 0,0 coordinate system origin so the image would not appear. If the map had other components, typically a drawing, the bug did not manifest because the bounding coordinates of such a vector component would be slightly non-zero and the union of all bounds was used in a calculation step, thus ensuring a non-zero bound would not trigger the bug. The bug has now been fixed and data with a true zero bound displays correctly.

* (Fix) No orphaned services in Manage Server dialog - In the Manage Services dialog used by Manifold Server, deleting a running service will not result in any orphaned services. Instead, the service will be stopped first and then deleted. If the service cannot be stopped within a reasonable time cap (30 seconds) a "delete failed" warning appears indicating the service(s) that could not be deleted.

* (Fix) No black rectangles - In past builds some sequences of rapid pans and zooms, especially with bigger data, could result in momentary blanking of the window to all-black or replacement by the rendered content rectangle with all black pixels. That was just a momentary flash and immediately replaced with rendered content, but the momentary flash was a bug in the rendering pipeline. Now fixed for both slippy pan and non-slippy pan regimes.

New Build - 9.0.182.3

Dimitri — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:58:50 GMT

There's a new build out, 9.0.182.3. It's a hotfix to the prior build but even if the fix is not relevant to your work I still recommend it for everyone because of the new features it has, brought forward from the planned 26 July build. Here are the release notes:

Hotfix + Hot new features

9 July 2026: Build 9.0.182.3 is a Cutting Edge Build that is recommended for all users. The following release notes are preliminary information: documentation has yet to be updated.

Build 9.0.182.3 delivers a hotfix for a build error reported by expert user rk on the forum: Release 9 .exe and .zip installations for Build 9.0.182.2 accidentally were configured to use Manifold Viewer restrictions on the ability of third party .NET applications to use either the Manifold API or the experimental Manifold ODBC application from outside Manifold. There was no restriction on scripting within Manifold itself or Manifold's own use of ODBC. Build 9.0.182.3 fixes that configuration error and restores full external .NET and ODBC access.

In addition to the hotfix, the new build delivers several outstanding new features that speed up rendering and deliver key structural improvements to essential SQL clauses that can reduce query run times dramatically.

As always with Cutting Edge builds, users are advised to retain a backup copy of the prior Base builds in case they would like to revert to 182.2 or 182.1.

Highlights

Occlusion culling between image server layers - Built-in, opaque image server layers automatically cull (no need to render) all built-in image server layers below them in maps. This greatly improves rendering speed when multiple image server layers are ON in a map.

Occlusion culling for all below image server layers- Built-in, opaque image server layers automatically cull all layers below them in maps that are within the bounding boxes of the image server layers. This greatly improves rendering speed when multiple layers are below an opaque image server layer: no need to render a complex or slow layer if an image server layer above it hides it.

GROUP BY speedup - A major rework of GROUP BY internals in the query engine provides significant (>10x) speed increase in many common cases with welcome (~3x to ~5x) speed increases in most other cases. Some of the work done for GROUP BY increases speed in various other parts of the query engine as well.

ORDER BY speedup - The new build provides significant speed increases, both materialized (SELECT ... INTO) and non-materialized use from the Command Window, especially in "narrow" queries with SELECTs involving relatively fewer fields. The effect is still very noticeable and useful in wider queries involving many fields where execution time tends to be dominated by simple moving of data for so many fields (the ORDER BY sorting in such cases is almost instantaneous). Non-materialized ORDER BY is dramatically faster: interactive sorts of large tables in the SQL Command Window using ORDER BY on a field to sort the table now display the first page as fast as or faster than CTRL-clicking a column header to sort the table.

Live ORDER BY views - Materialized views (running an ORDER BY query in the Command Window) now are "live" views that are updated against changes in the original table. Do a SELECT * FROM [table] ORDER BY [field] and the results table will appear rapidly, and then if [table] is opened in a different window and any rows are deleted or any fields are edited the results table in the Command Window will be updated when touched.

SELECT INTO with ORDER BY - This removes a limitation where ORDER BY could not be used with SELECT INTO constructions. SELECT INTO now works with ORDER BY without throwing error messages.

FETCH with SELECT INTO - This removes a limitation where FETCH could not be used with SELECT INTO constructions. SELECT INTO now works with FETCH. In addition, the FETCH stops materializing records after the desired FETCH number, so if a query uses FETCH 1000 on a 14,000,000 record table the query runs instantly as the INTO now stops scanning the source after the 1000th row instead of materializing 14 million rows. That's a dramatic effect especially when a query using FETCH runs with big tables in an SQL Command Window: it is often an over thousandfold speedup with big tables.

(Fix) External .NET and ODBC access restored - Release 9 .exe and .zip installations for Build 9.0.182.2 accidentally were configured to use Manifold Viewer restrictions on the ability of third party .NET applications to use either the Manifold API or the experimental Manifold ODBC application from outside Manifold. There was no restriction on scripting within Manifold itself or Manifold's own use of ODBC. Build 9.0.182.3 fixes that configuration error and restores full external .NET and ODBC access.

(Fix) No missing points - It has always been possible to set Styles where the symbol for a point is painted a significant distance away from the actual point. However, in prior builds in a map window the symbol might not have been painted if the point's actual location was offscreen even though the symbol paint location would fall onscreen. Rendering logic has been adjusted to deal with such situations. The bug existed long before current builds but was only noticed when slippy pan, by filling in pan margins, made it visible.

.NET API Question

davebic — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 21:11:24 GMT

Can the .NET API (Root/Application/CreateDatabaseForFile) be called from a standalone external WinForms application, or is it only supported as an Add-In running inside Manifold?

Workflow to georeference points with no coordinates - can I copy cursor position to selected record ?

HeyGL — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:18:41 GMT

How to transfer the cursor's coordinates from its position on a map into a selected record in a table?

tl;dr

My project is to georeference the NSW Historical Schools database. I've linked many historic schools to near/matching Gazetteer records, but about 10% of records are 'lost in space' - they are not georeferenced correctly, or are nominally at 0,0 (long/lat). Each school has changed type over the last 150 years resulting in perhaps 10 temporal records for each school - and each record needs to be georeferenced.

In reality, most of these thousands of schools no longer exist, but they almost all appear as identifiable land parcels on 100-year old parish maps and in historical records, so an approximate spatial location for each schoool can be visualized in Manifold.

Many hundreds of schools have a long/lat of 0,0 makling it tedious to Alt-select one record amongst hundreds so it could be dragged to the correct location? Nor is it easy to drag records when the zoomed scale is small (eg 1:1m) - it can be done but is tedious with lots of map manipulation.

My challenge is how to transfer coordinates from the visualized position - the cursor position - on the map (the topo, or satellite etc) into the relevant school record, when that school record has NO attributes that could link it a spatial location.

I have georeferenced some Parish maps to get cursor position, and that would simplify visualizing the historic locaton, but this is far too complex a task, considering that each Parish may have only a handful of schools to map.

Is there an easier work-flow for copying the cursor's lat/long into selected records ?

Thanks

Greg

New Build - 9.0.182.1

Dimitri — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 15:18:38 GMT

There's a new build out today: 9.0.182.1

Technically, it is a cutting edge build but it's also replaced the prior 9.0.182.0 base build on the downloads pages for both Release 9 and Viewer.

It delivers two new features that have been instantly adopted by everybody who's seen them:

1. Persist Recent swatches in the Select Color dialog across sessions. This has proven extremely handy for people who are making edits in multiple sessions and want to be able to re-use what they've just edited in one session in another session without having to save to a favorite.

2. Add drop shadow lines to the gradient square crosshair in the Select Color dialog, to improve visibility against light colors.

That latter addition is driving the look and feel of the new dialog so it's a "must have" for the many screenshots that are being shot or re-shot for the user manual.

There are two fixes as well:

3. (Fix) In the Select Color dialog replace 0-100 limits with 0-255 limits when editing alpha/opacity numeric edit box with arrow keys and the box is set to alpha.

4. (Fix) Remove occasional floating point packed color numbers appearing in mfd_meta JSON values for colors. Automatically updates any legacy uses on first write to that property record.

The first of those was a simple oversight. There wasn't any limit on the slider itself or on numeric edits, but using arrow keys maxed out at a top of 100 when the radio button was set to alpha. That should have been 255.

The second of those had no effect on interactive use because the pipelines to and from the JSON values are symmetric. But having signed numbers appearing in the JSON for those values is an error and over time would have impacted people who alter JSON properties strings programmatically. I doubt many people have had time to make such changes but if they have the fix automatically converts values to unsigned on the first write to the record.

Image projections Australia

Ian — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:56:49 GMT

I have a fairly simple question around image projections. I have only worked in NZ so only familiar with those projections and have some imagery from Australia to work with. The projection is MGA Zone 54 GDA2020 but the closest I can see in Manifold 8 or 9 is MGA94(54). Can someone let me know if that is the same projection?

Thanks

rotate a grid.

yves61 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:57:55 GMT

I am looking for some SQL coding in order to rotate a grid (drawing). I do not need rotating each cell of the grid separately, but the whole grid without breaking the alignment. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

SQL Help - Populate cell with comma separated list

arredondo.adam — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:56:43 GMT

This is probably basic, but I can't figure it out.

I have a table of mineral interest with columns for parcel number, interest owner, and mineral interest percentage.

In the parcels table, I'd like to populate a column ("mineral_interest_summary") with the names and percentage of the interest owners thereof.

E. G. Bugs Bunny (50%), Daffy Duck (25%), Elmer Fudd (25%).

I'll settle for any method to populate this data, but it would be nice to do it with an active column. Can anyone help?

Image Servers

wvayens — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:07:36 GMT

I don't seem to be able to access any image servers, such as Google Maps Street Map, Bing Maps Street Map or event OpenStreet Maps base.

Checking the event log, I'm getting cannot get web resource on any of them.

Any idea what might be going on?

Thanks.

OSM projection (manifold 8)

cassini — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:13:39 GMT

I need to import an OSM map extract into Manifold 8. Despite my efforts and reading on this forum, I haven't been able to do it.

The map appears to be in WB Mercator format (EPSG:3857). Is there a specific configuration for this system? Thank you in advance for your help.

Changing the table source of a drawing with a query

vincent — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 22:40:59 GMT

Hi,

Easy one : I want to change the name of the table that is the source of a drawing from a SQL query. What is the syntax ? I cannot find it.

Is there a list of properties in the documentation ? I cannot find it. The documentation is large, but I find it is often very hard to find what I want. M8 doc what so good. I miss it.

I tried with this, with no luck :

ALTER Drawing [base drawing]

(Drop Property ‘Table'

Add Property ‘Table' [base]

);

Thank you !

Downloading 32 and 64 bit Manifold 8 Versions and/or Fixing a Script to Run in 64

eolsonAG — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:51:41 GMT

I am still using Manifold 8, and I have to use the 32 bit version because a script we use all the time doesn't open when I use the 64 bit option. I got a new laptop and only installed the 32 bit accordingly, but it tends to crash when I am processing larger amounts of data. Therefore, I either need to find a way to download the 64 bit to use when crashing becomes an issue OR I need to adjust the script to open and run properly on 64.

Somehow, on my old computer, I had both versions and could use them interchangeably as needed. However, when I went to download the 64 bit on the this new device it overwrote the 32 and I had to reverse the changes.

I do not know the script language well so I am assuming finding a way to download both is an easier fix.

Mfd 9 crop image by vector

volker — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:09:45 GMT

inspirate from this post:

https://georeference.org/forum/t157591.9#157592

the sql from danb (many thanks to him) works in the most cases with my image, but now i have an image with 9 different z-values (from 0-9) and if i run the sql the result image only have one value = "1". I tbelieve it's not a single channnel image. But how to convert my image to this in mfd9 ? I can't work with mfd8, the image is to big (21GB) that's the reason i want to crop only this parts i need.

Setup GDAL for ESRI FGDB import

vincent — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:32:00 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to install GDAL for hours with the goal to import FGDB without problem in M9. I had no success.

I followed different threads and Manifold user manual page :

https://manifold.net/doc/mfd9/index.htm#gdal___ogr.htm

https://georeference.org/forum/t165304.11#165313

https://georeference.org/forum/t164392.16#164393

I tried different versions of GDAL and different sources. The C# script included in one of the thread have been useful. Even if everything is ok according to the C# script, the import is failing. The GDB plugin cannot be loaded, even if it is located at the right spot.

So my question : is anybody here who have a working GDAL/FGDB plugin and who is willing to share his installation files (or source) and some instructions valid in 2026? For the last Manifold version of course.

Thank you !

M9 determining the locations of zonal minima in a polygon layer

danb — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:48:49 GMT

I have two layers:

1. A single channel raster image representing groundsurface.

2. A vector layer of polygons.

In manifold 9 it is easy to derive zonal stats from the raster layer for each polygon e.g. max, min, avg etc.

Does anyone know of an efficient way to locate the pixel(s) with for example the minimum value in each polygon?

I ultimately want to get these into a point table, but while I can think of methods to do this, such as streaming the pixel and returning the coordinates where Z matches the zonal minimum, this seems inefficient on large tables and I wonder if anyone has any ideas about how to do this more efficiently?

Many thanks in advance.

New laptops, available with NVIDIA cards? What options for multiple processor graphics cards?

tonyw — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:39:32 GMT

To use Manifold, I specifically bought a Lenovo T580 with NVIDIA graphics card. This was in 2019. The T580 is now bricked, won't even boot the BIOS after a Windows update yesterday. Shopping for a replacement, but the only Lenovo option with an NVIDIA card costs $20,000. I haven't shopped for a laptop since 2019.

What are recommended specs these days for a laptop to run Manifold? What are people buying to take advantage of CUDA?

What happened to the programming example files?

arredondo.adam — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:23:27 GMT

I'm trying to download some add-in and scripting examples from the Programming Examples pages (https://manifold.net/tech/prog_examples.shtml) but the links are dead. Have they been moved somewhere else? I'm specifically looking for

CreateLayout.zip
scripts700.zip

Mfd 9 Web mapping suggestion

Mike Pelletier — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:26:16 GMT

Happy New Year all. Curious about others’ thoughts on the whether I'm correct or not with the following.

I’m trying to convince Manifold of the value in advancing their web mapping application to include typical features such as a search option, a measuring tool, scale bar, and https. Perhaps include an interactive parameter query option for a layer, to highlight Manifold’s SQL power. The hope is that they see that a little more effort would result in large value to the product and a free advertising.

Currently Manifold’s web mapping has some huge pluses, that the competition would love to have. It's super easy to setup/maintain/change, seems fast, low cost, low hassle, and can handle lots of layers with nice cartography. However, the rest of it is so basic that it would be too unprofessional to use in most cases. Meaning it would call into question the quality of the data, because the presentation is so poor.

It could be great for sharing data externally with the world, but also, it’s so easy to use that it would be nice for quickly sharing data internally, especially where zooming in/out on the data is important. Why perform all the GIS work in a Manifold and then let the world see the data with an ESRI or Mapserver logo?

Please consider adding your voice with a suggestion to Manifold, because I suspect they don’t see the value in pushing their web mapping to the next niche level and are content to leave it as is for fear of it not adding to sales.

layout limitations?

artlembo — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 02:44:54 GMT

I continue to automate layouts in Manifold 8 for clients and my own interests. I continue to toy with the idea of trying to do it in Manifold 8, but always run into problems, and just stick with 8. So, just a couple of quick questions for anyone who might have answers:

Does Manifold 9 allow coordinate tics to be placed at the edge of the map in a Layout like you can do in 8?
Is there a way to automatically zoom to a feature in a Layout in 9 like you can do in 8? In 8, you can tell a layout to zoom to everything, a particular component, and even a selected feature. I don't see this in 9.
It looks like 9 can only export a map as a .mml. In 8, I like being able to programmatically cycle through a bunch of layouts and export them to .pdf, .ai, etc. I don't think you can do that with 9.

I'm going to be adding a lot more questions to this list. It's late now, but I think I may take a layout I've created in 8, and document the troubles in trying to replicate it in 9. I fear that 9 may be incomplete as a good cartographic tool.

MFD 8 Export Layout to PDF

volker — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 09:41:20 GMT

Have someone a script that export all Layouts from a map to PDF ?

I have a map with 100 Layouts and i am to lazy to export by hand...

Thank you in advance !

changing Temp file location

vincent — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:12:56 GMT

Hi,

My computer is lacking free disk space on C: while I work on a large project.

How can I change the Temp folder location so M9 can use space on another hard drive instead ?

Thank you !

M9 Path to the currently open map project

danb — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 20:37:32 GMT

Does anyone know where in the Manifold 9 UI to find the directory path to the currently open map project?

"File > Save As" and "File > Recent Projects" isn't always reliable and I would certainly find this useful if it wasn't already supported.

Many thanks in advance.

SQL cast datetime

cycloxslug — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 15:07:15 GMT

This is a very basic SQL question, but I've wasted hours looking through the documentation, trying ChatGPT, etc and have not succeeded.

I have a table that was imported from *.csv using the "import" menu. A column [Time], which contains text in the format "2023-11-30 01:52:06.956389" is imported as a nvarchar field. I need to convert it to datetime so I can use date functions with it (like calculating week of the year). I have tried a simple query which seems like it should work (as well as the many varieties of CONVERT and TRY_CONVERT that ChatGPT suggested though do not appear to be part of Manifold SQL and don't parse):

SELECT CAST([Time] AS DATETIME)

FROM [array1_vps Drawing];

The query runs, but only generates "NULL" values. I also tried:

SELECT StringDateTime([Time], '')

FROM [array1_vps Drawing];

and got the same result ("NULL"). I'm sure I could brute force extracting pieces of the string and using the Compose function, but that seems unnecessary?

Incidentally, if anyone has a suggestion on a Manifold-specific resource for learning SQL (beyond the documentation) it would be appreciated. I'm about to give up and just stick with R, as I can perform all the database tasks quickly and easily there, it is just nice to have a GUI interface for quickly exploring/playing with spatial data.

Import Image

cassini — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 10:20:17 GMT

hello everyone,

I'm trying to open a TIF map with a color palette in Manifold 8.

Here's a preview I got with QGIS.

Can I open this type of map with my preferred software, M8?

Wishing you all a wonderful end to the year!

Linking image servers to Manifold

goldtom54 — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 20:36:23 GMT

I've read the directions in the Manifold manual several times and have downloaded the starter Pack with all the dlls in it. However, those dll's are from 2010. Obviously things have changed since then.

SO, does anyone have an ISI Driver to connect to the USDA NAIP orthophotos or an ISI driver to connect to Google Maps or anything of the kind?

Please help, this is holding up my project completion.

Tom

Connecting Tableau to Manifold 9 with ODBC (still not possible)

rk — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 15:29:49 GMT

I had a reason to install Tableau Desktop trial.

I tried to make an ODBC connection to M9 .map file.

I had a little bit more success than previous times. But not much.

If I configure the ODBC datasource to open the .map-file read-only, then I could actually see a little bit inside the .map file. Otherwise i get an error 7EA7966B.

I have to manually type the name of the table (hello_tableau) and (+) add it.

I can see only 1 field (int32_field) out of 3 (no mfd_id, nvarchar_field).

Tableau can count the rows in the table (14), but not show any values from int32_field.

Sadly i'm not planning to buy a Tableau license, so I do not have pressing need for the connection to work. Just documenting the current state.

Error Code: 7EA7966B
[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] The driver doesn't support the version of ODBC behavior that the application requested (see SQLSetEnvAttr).
Generic ODBC requires additional configuration. The driver and DSN (data source name) must be installed and configured to match the connection.
Unable to connect using the DSN named "mfd_odbc_test". Check that the DSN exists and is a valid connection.

Attachments:
mfd_odbc_tableau1.png
mfd_odbc_tableau2.png
mfd_odbc_tableau3.png

Can't create anchor points correctly

wvayens — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 17:21:05 GMT

I'm stumped trying to create callouts can't seem to create an anchor point.

I've attached a test file I've been working with, which are precincts in my area. I have a Point that's the center of my shape, which I created long ago and is plotting correctly.

However, if I try and create an anchor point, either by duplicating that GeomPoint or creating a separate point (GeomAnchor2) using the function GeomMakePoint, they don't end up in the correct location.

I'm using EPSG:2237 (most government files around here use this) and every field and drawing uses this.

Can any point point me in the direction of what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks,

Attachments:
PrecinctTest.map

Split lines at intersection

Sloots — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 14:39:40 GMT

Hi,

I have a drawing of roads that I want to split at intersections with other roads. My starting situation is like the image below. Two lines that meet at an infliction point.

I want to end up in a situation where the purple line is broken into two parts as in the following image.

Important is that I don't want to lose the attributes. Class in this example. Any suggestions? I must go fast since i want to run it on millions of lines.

Chris

Unable again to load a GDB

vincent — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 21:49:21 GMT

Hi,

Often, I cannot import an ESRI FGDB into M9. No error in the log : Import: E:\Big_v2.gdb\gdb (0.093 sec).

But nothing is imported !

Importing the same GDB in QGIS, exporting it as a GPKG and exporting the GPKG in M9 is working.

I atttached the GDB from ArcGIS Pro 3.5.

Does anyone can import it ?

(I'm using Manifold's last version)

Attachments:
Big_v2.gdb.zip

Unable to create geometry within PostgreSQL DB

vincent — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:31:16 GMT

Hi,

I installed PostgreSQL 15 ad PostGIS 3.5 on Windows 11 Pro. I followed the instructions in the Manifold documentation (https://manifold.net/doc/mfd9/connect_to_postgresql.htm). I skipped the firewal and network part, because I work locally with all installed on the same machine.

I can copy/paste content in a Postgre DB, but the geom field remains to null in tables. So I don't see objects in drawing. Also, I can create a new drawing within the Postgre DB, but the geom field remains null when I try to create a geometric object. If I create a point, a got an entry in the DB, but without geometry.

What can be wrong ?

Thank you.