Tuesday - March 24, 2009

MapPoint User Survey Extended, MapPoint/Excel Programming Tutorial, and More

Welcome to another issue of the MP2Kmag Update. We have recently updated our MapForums Store to reflect the availability of both MapPoint 2009 North America and Europe. See below for more information on extras and free shipping.

In this issue we are announcing new "directory" sections on MapForums for MapPoint and Virtual Earth consultants and MapPoint/VE add-ins and related products. We also have another installment of our MapPoint/Excel VBA tutorials with a tool to draw circles around a set of address using the specified radius in miles and color of the circle. Finally, there is a discussion about obtaining a GPS puck for MapPoint 2009.

MapPoint User Survey Extended. The MapPoint Team at Microsoft is eager to hear your thoughts about what new features should go in future versions of MapPoint! Fill out the brief survey by midnight Tuesday, March 31st for a chance to win one of fifty $25 Amazon gift certificates. More details below.

MP2K Magazine is your source for independent news and information about MapPoint and Virtual Earth technologies and we also host the popular web forum for MapPoint users and developers (www.mapforums.com). 

This issue features the second of a two-part article by Richard Marsden on Functional Programming with MapPoint and F#.

This Issue's Contents at a Glance
 - MapPoint User Survey Extended to March 31st
 - Automating MapPoint with Excel VBA - Tutorial 6
 - TIP: Buying a GPS for MapPoint 2009
 - MapPoint Consultants and Products Directories
 - MP2K Magazine / MapForums Twitter Channel
 - Get Published in MP2K Magazine
 - Functional Programming with MapPoint and F#: Part 2, by Richard Marsden

Happy Mapping and please forward this newsletter to anyone who would be interested!

MapPoint User Survey Extended to March 31st!


Automating MapPoint with Excel VBA - Tutorial 6

Building off our previous tutorial which draws radii around a list of addresses, in this installment we also read in the color of the line. Earlier tutorials can be found here 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Again, the main portion of the code is a loop. Working through a list of data in an Excel worksheet is a bit kludgy. It basically just started with the first row where data is expected and works it's way down (nReadRow = nReadRow + 1) until it detects a blank cell in the Address column.

In this version, the color is read from the seventh column. A special function "AssignColor" translates English color names to VBA color codes. This is then used later to assign the Line's ForeColor.

At the end of the script, the map is zoomed to the dataset points and then zoomed out (objMap.Altitude = objMap.Altitude * 2) to show the circles. As a future enhancement, it may make sense for the zoom out factor to be determined by the largest radius in the list.

  'test to see if there is an address in column 2 (B) for the current row
  Do While Cells(nReadRow, 2) <> ""
   
    szAddress = Cells(nReadRow, 2)
    szCity = Cells(nReadRow, 3)
    szState = Cells(nReadRow, 4)
    szZip = Cells(nReadRow, 5)
    fRadius = Cells(nReadRow, 6)
    nColor = AssignColor(Cells(nReadRow, 7))
   
    Set objLoc = objMap.FindAddressResults( _
      szAddress, szCity, szState, szZip)(1)
 
    objMap.AddPushpin objLoc, Cells(nReadRow, 2)

    objMap.Shapes.AddShape geoShapeRadius, objLoc, fRadius, fRadius
    objMap.Shapes.Item(nShapeIndex).ZOrder (geoSendBehindRoads)
    objMap.Shapes.Item(nShapeIndex).Line.ForeColor = nColor
    objMap.Shapes.Item(nShapeIndex).Line.Weight = 2
   
    nShapeIndex = nShapeIndex + 1
    nReadRow = nReadRow + 1
  Loop
 
  objMap.DataSets.ZoomTo
  objMap.Altitude = objMap.Altitude * 2

The spreadsheet and complete code can be downloaded from the MapForums Plus Downloads section for MapForums Plus Subscribers.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or enhancements you would like to share please post in the MapPoint / Excel VBA discussion thread. Keep an eye out for a continuation of this series in future issues.

TIP: Buying a GPS for MapPoint 2009

In the past couple months, several people have mentioned that they have MapPoint 2009 and would like to get a GPS for it and are looking for recommendations on which GPS is going to work best with MapPoint.

Streets & Trips 2009, a sister product of MapPoint 2009 which shares much of the same code base, sells with a GPS unit on Amazon for little more than GPS puck by itself.

If you have other suggestions for a GPS unit for MapPoint 2009 or have more information, please share in this thread on the forum.

MapPoint Consultants and Products Directories

We are starting new sections on MapForums for listings of MapPoint Consultants and Companies who specialize in Microsoft Geography Solutions including MapPoint and Virtual Earth.

If you are a consultant who know MapPoint or Virtual Earth, this is a terrific way to read our audience and share information about your capabilities, services, describe past projects, and communicate your availability. You are welcome to post your resume and keep your thread or profile updated periodically with references, new offerings, and contant information. Get started today by posting "New Thread" in the MapPoint Consultant Directory.

Similarly we are also starting a new Products Directory for MapPoint Add-ins, Virtual Earth tools, and related products. If you have a MapPoint/VE Add-in or tool, list it in here to get some great visibility and exposure for your product. To keep your product near the front of the directory, you can post periodically updates, tutorials, case studies, or other new information about your product.

MP2K Magazine Twitter Channel

Interesting news items and updates for MapElves, MapForums, and MP2K Magazine are posted to our twitter channel at http://twitter.com/mp2kmag. Here's the original announcement on MapForums regarding the launch of our twitter channel.

Get Published in MP2K Magazine

If you have a MapPoint presentation, neat programming technique, or would simply like to share the ways in which you are using MapPoint technology or any other ideas, contact us to discuss how we can turn your knowledge into an article and share your experience with the rest of the MapPoint community of users and developers.

Thanks to Marvin Hlavac for allowing us to use the picture on the right of his Maltese puppy eating from the MapPoint mug.

In this, the second of a two-part article on functional programming with MapPoint, Richard Marsden uses F# in a practical example classifying data points as wetlands based on hydrology, vegetation, and soil measurements.

"In the first part of this article, I introduced F# and demonstrated how it can be used to call MapPoint using both early and late binding. Here I present a more practical example that classifies pushpins according to their data fields. Functional languages are defined in terms of functions, and it seemed that a classification application with non-trivial logic would be a good way of doing this. In fact some functional languages such as Prolog are designed for this kind of logic-based classification.

"The specific application uses wetland data produced by ecology students of the University of Dallas (see http://www.biomarcy.com/wetlands/map.php for a Virtual Earth / PHP implementation). The underlying database consists of many data points with field measurements. This data has been imported into MapPoint using the Data Import Wizard. The application will determine if each pushpin represents a wetland based on the field measurements (stored as pushpin data fields), and change the pushpin symbol accordingly. Note that some data might be incomplete, but this is marked in the database using flags."

   Full article text Discuss this story 

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