Global Mapper v25.0

TIGER 2007 Files

jmpreiks
jmpreiks Global Mapper User
edited April 2008 in Vector Data
Hi,

Is there some way that I can import the new 2007 TIGER data using the nice formatting that was given for the 2006 TIGER data? Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Justin

Comments

  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Justin,

    We are actually working on that now and nearly have it complete. I have placed a new build at http://www.globalmapper.com/global_mapper9.zip with most of the auto-formatting working for you to try. Simply download that file and extract the contents into your existing v9.xx installation folder to give it a try.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Thanks Mike, it seems to be working pretty well. Let me know when you finish it up.

    Justin
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Justin,

    If you are intersted in addressing, I have now completed the Tiger 2007 import so that when you load the edge file it will automatically look for the address file and add attributes to line features with the address information for that line, if any. I have placed a new build at http://www.globalmapper.com/global_mapper9.zip with the change for you to try. Simply download that file and extract the contents into your existing v9.xx installation folder to give it a try.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Thanks again Mike. Is there any way to turn off those statistical boundaries that I never use (or otherwise select which features are loaded from the edges file).

    Justin
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    You can use the filter settings on the Vector Display tab of the Configuration dialog to turn off those types that you are not interested in.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Thanks Mike
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    Been following this thread since I have a keen interest. Prior to this thread I had downloaded and made some baby steps with the data. I notice roads have gone from CFCC Axx to MTFCC S1xxx categories.

    A few questions:
    - Why do some of the 2007FE zip files not open? I get a message about need to be unarchived.
    - You must do a lot of data processing. For example a FullName field like this (US Hwy 50) will not show "50" in the shield. Whereas your processed Name (US50) has "50" in the shield. If I open my already processed files, this preprocessing does not occur. Hence you must preprocess the Edge file?
    - Since I have the whole state loaded in four quadrants, I'm wondering if reopening the zips with your new preprocessor would be a net time savings?
    - I opened one small counties Edge file, it takes forever and then I try to open the Search dialog and that takes "twice forever", what's happening?

    Just trying to understand the basics.

    BTW, you've introduced a new feature, clicking on a line in the search dialog highlights the feature on the map . . . nice!!!

    Thanks
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    You can use the filter settings on the Vector Display tab of the Configuration dialog to turn off those types that you are not interested in.

    Unfortunately the features I am trying to turn off are of the "unknown type" variety, this would lead me to turn off a whole variety of things that I may want to keep. Is there a workaround for this?

    Also, if someone else opens the workspace on another computer, will it retain the visible layer settings? I ask because there are many other users of the GM workspace I create.

    Thanks,
    Justin
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Some of the 2007FE files just contain a DBF table for joining two other tables and don't actually contain any spatial data. Those are the files that you'll get the errors on. I'd suggest loading just the arealm.zip, areawater.zip, edges.zip, and pointlm.zip files.

    I would suggest re-importing your data with the new build because not only will the road names be auto-iconized, but the features will be automatically classified based on the MTFCC codes and the address information which is now stored in a separate DBF file will automatically be joined to the appropriate road segments as attributes if possible. There would not be an easy way to do this yourself.

    I am surprised that opening a small county file took forever. I just picked a random county in Florida (Alachua county) which seemed to be of average size and it opened in less than 30 seconds. In general loading the new Shapefile layers should be faster than loading the old Tiger format used in earlier releases.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Justin,

    Do you know the MTFCC codes of the particular features that you want to turn off? I may be able to auto assign some of those statistical boundaries to some type (like 'Processing/Closure Line') that might fit them and thus make it easy for you to turn them off.

    The feature type filter settings are not stored in a workspace, they are stored on a per user basis on your machine, so other users would need similar filter settings to turn off those features.

    If rather than using a filter you searched using the Search->Search by Attributes menu command and then deleted the results that you didn't want and saved that to a workspace file, that would work. Another approach might be to export your filtered results to a new file, like a Global Mapper Package file, and just provide that to the other users rather than the raw Tiger files.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    I am surprised that opening a small county file took forever. I just picked a random county in Florida (Alachua county) which seemed to be of average size and it opened in less than 30 seconds. In general loading the new Shapefile layers should be faster than loading the old Tiger format used in earlier releases.
    The Alachua, FL edges file is four times larger than my county. It takes Global Mapper (Core Duo, 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM) 7-min to open and show the lines of Chaffee, CO. It gets to 82% in 10 sec then grinds away for 7-minutes.

    I did a clean boot it assure no system problems. If I click on Search, the computer will go away for half an hour. Task mgr shows 35MB of RAM and one core will pin at 50% CPU.

    I'll download and test Alachua, FL
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    I'll download and test Alachua, FL
    Took about 20-30 seconds to open Alachua, FL edges file.

    I'll download a fresh copy of Chaffee, CO.
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    I'll download a fresh copy of Chaffee, CO.
    The fresh copy opened in ~10 sec and GM even remembered the vector filter settings. Search also opened with no problems.

    What am I bid on a corrupt copy of Chaffee, CO? ;)
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Roger,

    I took a look and found that the addressing for some of the roads in Chaffee, CO was messed up such that one particular road appeared to have thousands of address ranges associated with it. This was slowing things down tremendously when loading and searching on the file. I have been able to fix this and now the file loads very quickly even with addressing added. I have placed a new build at http://www.globalmapper.com/global_mapper9.zip with the change for you to try. Simply download that file and extract the contents into your existing v9.xx installation folder to give it a try.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    Downloaded the new build of GM and tested both copies of Chaffee edges. They must be different even thought they are the same size.

    The "corrupt" copy paused at 82% for ~1 sec then loaded fine. I'm assuming it paused at an If/Then. The fresh copy sailed right through 82%, no pause.

    However, you could only have a "fresh" copy, so I'm a bit puzzled by this.

    As always I never cease to be amazed how fast you can find these glitches and come up with a fix.

    Thanks
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Roger,

    I'm guessing when you downloaded your "fresh" copy of the edges file that you didn't also download the addr.zip file. If that is not present, the Global Mapper doesn't get the addressing information which was the slowdown before. I bet if you copy your addr.zip file to where your "fresh" copy lives that it will behave the same as before.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    Roger,

    I'm guessing when you downloaded your "fresh" copy of the edges file that you didn't also download the addr.zip file. If that is not present, the Global Mapper doesn't get the addressing information which was the slowdown before. I bet if you copy your addr.zip file to where your "fresh" copy lives that it will behave the same as before.
    Noop.

    I had downloaded the entire set of 17 files, but only for Chaffee. I then played around with the entire set to figure out I only wanted edges and a subset of that. So when I downloaded a fresh edges, I simply named it edges2. So the addr file is in the same folder as edges2.

    I've attached a copy of my April 9th download if you're curious. See if you don't get a pause at 82%. Better yet, see if it chokes an older build of GM.
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Roger,

    The renaming would explain it. Global Mapper expects the address file for an edge file to have basically the same name, so a file ending in _edges2.zip would only look for an _edges.zip file. So the addressing file is not found and the slow addressing table join would not be performed.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Do you know the MTFCC codes of the particular features that you want to turn off? I may be able to auto assign some of those statistical boundaries to some type (like 'Processing/Closure Line') that might fit them and thus make it easy for you to turn them off.

    Mike, the code I am looking to turn off is P0001, but I am not sure it should belong in the 'Processing/Closure Line' category. That sounds more like P0004, which I am also not sure if it is useful or not.

    - P0001 is called "Nonvisible Linear Legal/Statistical Boundary"
    - P0004 is called "Other non-visible bounding Edge (e.g., Census water boundary, boundary of an areal feature)"

    Thanks,
    Justin
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    Justin,

    I have gone ahead and added a new "Invisible Boundary" line type that both the P0001 and P0004 codes map to. The default drawing style is very subtle so it looks nice, plus you can easily turn them off now. I have placed a new build at http://www.globalmapper.com/global_mapper9.zip with the change for you to try. Simply download that file and extract the contents into your existing v9.xx installation folder to give it a try.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Thanks again Mike! As always, it works great. The subtle line type works pretty well, then if I don't turn it off on someone's computer it still won't be mistaken for a road.

    Though I do have one more request to bother you with. I have placed a multitude of counties in a map catalog to save loading times, and it seems to have to reload the shapefiles every time I pan or zoom away from an area and then come back to it. It never used to do this, once it got loaded one time, it was fine until you closed GM. Is there any way for this to happen for this data? It's not a big deal, but it is a little bit annoying.

    Justin
  • jmpreiks
    jmpreiks Global Mapper User
    edited April 2008
    Sorry for the constant stream of requests! I'm sure you already have enough to worry about!
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    The map catalog works by keeping a certain number of files in memory and automatically unloaded files that aren't needed for display when too many files get loaded. This allows the map catalog to deal with very large collections of data without running out of memory. There isn't any way to disable this as it would defeat the purpose of the map catalog.

    Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • Roger Edrinn
    Roger Edrinn Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited April 2008
    The TIGER 2007FE dataset is missing an important category, namely collector roads. I assume the absent MTFCC S1300 will be someday used for these roads.

    FWIW
  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited April 2008
    You're right, I had not noticed the missing collectors (or rather the poorly classified collectors), but there they are. I've added support for the S1300 code, so hopefully it will be used in future releases of the Tiger data.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com