A new update to Manifold System is now available.

The update contains hundreds of improvements and fixes in the following areas:

Layer groups: Layers in the Layers pane can be grouped into folders. Folders can be nested within other folders to arbitrary depth. Layers in a group can be easily manipulated together: they can be selected, reordered, assigned a desired opacity, and so on. Layer tabs in map windows use layer groups as well. Layer tabs for groups report rendering and caching status for an entire group, allow zooming to an entire group, allow reordering entire groups using drag and drop, etc. Groups have their own on / off status. A layer is considered to be visible only if it is turned on and all groups it is in are turned on as well.

Record pane enhancements: Alt-clicking in a map window picks up to 10 objects under the clicked location. The picked objects can then be cycled through in the Record pane. Moving between objects in the Record pane automatically zooms to them. The Record pane can be used to cycle between selected objects. Alt-clicking an image tile picks it for the Record pane. Clicking a pixel in a picked tile scrolls to that pixel to show pixel values, which can be edited.

Vector editing enhancements: Explicit editing modes for inserting, moving and adding coordinates. Snap modes to snap to grid, to a bearing or to a relative bearing, with configurable snap parameters. Snap to coordinates can use either the active layer or an arbitrary subset of visible layers. Snap to coordinates automatically snaps to coordinates in the same object. Dragging coordinates uses snap modes. New commands allow converting line segments to circle, ellipse or spline curves and back. New commands can start, close, re-start, delete or reverse branches. Backspace deletes the last entered coordinate, and can be used repeatedly to delete multiple coordinates. Many editing commands have keyboard shortcuts, all commands with keyboard shortcuts show them in context menus for reference. The entire editing infrastructure is available in the tracker tool, allowing tracker measurements over complex paths.

Traverses: The coordinate list in the Record pane can be loaded or saved to a file, using either Manifold coordinates format or ESRI traverse format. The coordinate list can be switched to show coordinates as traverse commands dynamically, with interactive changes to coordinates immediately reflected in the commands. Clicking a traverse command allows changing it to a compatible command (for example, a direction-distance command that specifies a line segment can be switched to an angle-direction command and back). The Traverse Parameters dialog specifies direction type and direction units used for traverse commands, including support for various ESRI-style options.

Coordinate system enhancements: Built-in coordinate systems include EPSG data up to EPSG 9.8.2, adding about 1000 new systems and transforms. New supported projection: Equal Earth. High precision reprojection with support for NADCON / NTv2 transforms, using grid files loaded from Manifold folders. A GRIDS.DAT file with over 200 MB of compressed definitions of 170+ grids for many countries can be downloaded separately, to avoid bulking up the build for those who do not use grids. Parsing PRJ files supports WKT2. Coordinate systems can be copied and pasted. Reprojection dialogs allow a choice of conversion path between systems if there are multiple alternatives available. Reprojecting an image allows specifying explicit pixel scale, image origin, pixel type and pixel tile size, with automatic choices available. Favorite coordinate systems can be set either to override or to ignore scales and offsets. Favorite systems that override scales and offsets are shown with a trailing '#' in the menus.

Cleaner and smarter UI: Visuals used in grids and various controls have been slightly adjusted for a flatter, more modern look. Grids with toggles switch toggles using the traditional Space key or plain click (not double click). Grids with folders support expanding and collapsing items. Keys on the numeric keypad work for shortcuts. Menus support access keys (eg, Alt-F-O for File - Open). Access keys are localizable for international language support. Menus containing favorites have been streamlined. Clicks have been reorganized both to allow more options and to be simpler to remember. Some UI features can use repeated clicks (Alt-click to pick an object in a map window, click a coordinate to start editing coordinates, click away from the object to stop editing coordinates, etc) for faster operation.

Watersheds: New transforms compute watershed areas, watershed lines (streams), and upstream or downstream watershed objects. Created watersheds include data for linking watersheds into a hierarchy, Shreve / Strahler orders, individual flow through a watershed and total flow through a watershed together with all watersheds that flow into it. Watershed computations are much faster and have more options than in Release 8. Watershed computations can use multiple threads. A new transform allows filling sinks prior to performing watershed analysis.

Viewsheds: New transforms provide viewshed / visibility computations, including computing areas visible from any or all specified observers, computing a visibility index image giving the number of observers visible from each pixel, or computing a visibility index for any or all observers. Viewshed computations are much faster than Release 8. Viewshed computations can use multiple threads.

Faster startup, leaner and smarter installs: Code for ECW / JPEG2000 / Unicode collates / V8 has been moved into separate DLLs that are not loaded until they are needed, reducing startup time. 64-bit installs use the same data for Unicode collates in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes, reducing install size. Viewer installs no longer include components of V8 that were previously part of the core, reducing install size. Install packages use a new, more robust procedure to register the ODBC driver, which allows uninstalling the driver even if Manifold DLLs have been damaged. The ODBC driver can also be installed or uninstalled from within the application, which is useful for portable installs.

Many additions to dataports: A new, specialized, high speed index for point cloud data in LAS / LAZ dramatically improves speed when linking LiDAR data files. Linking a LAS / LAZ file builds a specialized spatial index optimized for fast thinning of point data for rendering, which is stored in a separate file. Images linked from ECW / JPEG2K / SID files allow overriding the coordinate system, performing color adjustments via styles, etc. A new dataport supports NASA PDS files. A new dataport for generic JSON, parses JSON data that is not necessarily GeoJSON into tables. New dataports for web CSV and web JSON allow linking CSV or JSON data from a web URL. Dataports for databases allow extending tables with virtual computed fields, with the values of those fields computed dynamically in a Manifold session and not saved back into the database. Oracle connections are much faster at bulk reads. SQL Server connections can use the newest family of SQL Server drivers available from Microsoft (MSOLEDBSQL). Working with GDB allows editing styles or coordinate systems of existing components and allows creating new components of all types except images, storing all such changes and additions in a specialized table in the geodatabase. Working with GPKG checks whether the SQLite stack includes geometry parsing functions used by spatial indexes, and if not, provides its own implementation of these functions to allow inserting or altering geometry data without SpatiaLite. The GDAL dataport supports GDAL 2.3, 2.4, and 3.0.

Many new query functions: New functions support composing coordinate systems and coordinate converters, Euclidean / geodetic measurements, computing watersheds including specialized functions to compute various subproducts, computing viewsheds, retrieving pixel values covered by geometry, and more.

Numerous performance improvements: in scripts, in GPGPU code, in dataports, in contour transforms, in tracing transforms, etc. The memory cache performs much better under heavy load. The size of the memory cache can be increased from the default values in the Options dialog, which is useful on machines with a lot of RAM.

For detailed lists of changes, see documentation or threads for individual 9.0.169.x builds in the Cutting Edge forum area.

The update is available on the Product Downloads page.