MapInfo Tutorial Home
Section One
Section One: Getting Started
Part One: About MapInfo
What is MapInfo?
MapInfo is a commercially available Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software package. Using the familiar Windows Icons Menus Pointer (WIMP) Graphical User Interface (GUI), it allows the user to import geographically referenced data and to create thematic maps of different variables.
The current version of MapInfo Professional is version 7.5. A 20 day trial version may be downloaded free of charge by following the steps below.
Downloading a trial version
- Use a web browser to navigate to http://www.mapinfo.com. Click on Products & Services from the grey menu bar, and click the blue arrows under Software on the page that appears.
- MapInfo Professional appears at the top of a list of products on the screen which appears. Select the orange View Product link beneath this.
- The next screen describes MapInfo Professional. Choose the grey Demos & Downloads link at the top of the page.
- Choose the grey link to MapInfo Professional v7.5 Trial Version, which is the top link of the Downloads section.
- The next screen will invite you to either log in using your MapInfo SitePass, or to create a SitePass if you do not already have one. Log in, or follow the steps to create a new SitePass and then use this to log in.
- Read the licence agreement on the next screen, and choose the Accept button at the bottom.
- Check your system specification against the download requirements. Follow the four stages of the download instructions on the same page (you may need to scroll down).
- Important: Do not use the links in the download section until you have created a temporary directory (step 1 of the download instructions).
- During the installation process, it is advisable to accept the default settings, especially if you are a new user.
- Please note: Occasionally, MapInfo make changes to their website. However, the site is user friendly and any variation from these instructions will be self explanatory.
- You will be asked to restart your computer. Once you have done this you will be up and running with MapInfo Professional version 7.5.
Basic GIS
- Geographical Information Systems (GIS) were defined by Burrough (1996) as "a powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving, transforming and displaying spatial data from the real world." GIS include "a database system in which most of the data are spatially indexed" (Smith et al, 1987), and these data may be displayed as tables or maps in GIS software packages such as MapInfo.
- Geographical Information Systems may be either 'raster', i.e. a continuous surface stored as cells, or 'vector', stored as discrete point, line and polygon objects with attached attributes. MapInfo is a vector based GIS.
- Points - single data locations, with an x and y co-ordinate.
- Lines - connections between two points. A point may be seen as a line with only one set of x and y co-ordinates.
- Polygons, or regions - a closed area composed of points which are joined by lines.
- Attributes - the text attached to any point, line or polygon entity. This may be an address for a point representing a house, a name for a line representing a road, or a land use type for a region representing a forest.
File formats
To use a coverage, or map layer, in MapInfo, a number of files are required.
- filename.tab - a MapInfo table.
- filename.map - the co-ordinates of the data.
- filename.dat - the attribute data.
- filename.id - an index file containing the links between objects in the .map file and attributes in the .dat file.
- filename.ind - an index file for the .dat file, in order to allow searches.
Important: Do not delete any of these files for a given coverage. MapInfo requires all of them for a coverage to work. Only if you wish to delete the entire coverage and not use it again should you delete any of these files, in which case delete all the files associated with a given coverage name. Otherwise, should you delete one, you will probably lose your work.
You may also have:
- filename.wor - a workspace, which saves information about the location of open tables and maps.
It is important to individually save all tables and maps which have been edited before exiting MapInfo, even if you do save the workspace. Deleting a workspace will not result in the loss of data, as the tables which were used in the workspace remain unmodified. However, maps, graphs, layouts and the like would be lost if they had not been individually saved. If there are unsaved tables, MapInfo will prompt the user with a save dialog box on exiting the program.
Section One
MapInfo Tutorial Home