Spatial Manager Desktop™ - FAQs: How to Start?
A powerful tool to manage spatial data but, how to Start it?
If you comes here from the shortcut on the Windows Desktop, go directly to the paragraph below that starts as: "Finally, when you install Spatial Manager Desktop™, the setup application..."
Have you downloaded the setup program? If not, you need to download it from the *Spatial Manager™ Download page
First of all you need to install Spatial Manager Desktop™ by executing the setup program. The name of the file to run will be different for each release of the application. It will appear as follows: SpatialManagerDesktop-X.exe, where "X" is the release number of the application
32-bit and 64-bit versions: there are 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Spatial Manager Desktop™ but you do not need to worry about what platform is selected because the setup program automatically chooses the right version depending on the platform of Windows on your computer. Under some circumstances it may be of interest to run the 32-bit version even when working in 64-bit Windows since the application may be faster if the amount of data to be managed is not very large. If you want to install the 32-bit version (in addition to the 64-bit version) on a computer which has a 64-bit version of Windows, you must add the parameter "install32bits=1" (lowercase and no spaces between characters) when running the setup program. Watch this short video to learn how:
Next, you will see the Spatial Manager Desktop™ icon placed on the Windows Desktop (two icons if you have installed the 64-bit and the 32-bit versions), which will let you start the application
Finally, when you install Spatial Manager Desktop™, the setup application also adds a Sample data set including some spatial files to your system. Watch this short video and follow the next steps to learn how to start using the application and to check that everything works fine
- Launch Spatial Manager Desktop™
- In the "Data sources" panel, expand the "Sample data" Shortcut to access the sample Shapefiles (SHP)
- Right-click over any Shapefile (SHP) to load the spatial information into a new Map
- Check the loaded Features and play with the Map
- Note for the Trial version: during the testing period you will not be able to load more than 100 Features from a file
- Load more Shapefiles (SHP) into the same Map or into new Maps
- Try to load another kind of spatial files such as Google Earth KML, GPS/GPX, SQLite or XYZ point files
- Note about Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS): if you want to merge into the same Map spatial data which has been saved using differents CRSs, you need to Transform the Coordinates of the incoming data so that they are consistent with each other. This can help you learn how the Coordinate Transformation works in the application. In the sample data set, the Shapefiles (SHP) and the SQLite and XYZ files were saved using the CRS "NAD27 / California zone I" (SRID=26741), and the KML and GPX files were saved using the CRS "WGS 84" (SRID=4326) (mandatory for these formats)
So what now?
Now you can try to load and play with your own spatial data and create your own Maps, Shortcuts and User Data Sources. We recommend you take a look at these Wiki pages to learn more about:
- Application introduction, main features, demo video
- Licenses, activation, support, updates, purchasing options
- Application Data Providers
- Interface, Wizards, Options
- Data sources, Shortcuts, User Data Sources
- Spatial files
- Databases, Data stores ("Standard" and "Professional" editions only)
- Maps, Layers, views
- Selecting and filtering Features
- Layer Spatial Queries ("Standard" and "Professional" editions only)
- Data edition
- Import and export processes, parameters, Coordinate Transformation, Tasks
- Map Layers management
- Data use, export data, clipboard, printing
And some useful links to other pages of Spatial Manager Desktop™: