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Drawing a buffer zone?


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Hi!

Drawing buffer zone for a point is easy eanough (circle), but how can I draw buffers for odd-shaped objects? I tried the double line polygon tool, but the zone becomes way off in the corner parts if the object has sharp corners.

MapInfo has just a command for it. I couldn't find an analogue in VW.

Any help?

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MapInfo and many other GIS-programs indeed do this. VW is not a GIS-program and the company behind it is not interested in the GIS-market. (This I have on record.)

You should be able to simulate a buffer zone with a double-line polygon, except perhaps for certain (common?) situations. In fact, I started to program a BZ facility, but in the absence of commercial demand, gave up years ago.

My advice is to create the BZs in MapInfo and, if necessary, bring them into VW via DXF or SHAPE.

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You got it done with a program that costs, what, one third of MapInfo...

MapInfo costs about 1730 EUR in my country and VW fundamentals 12,5 costs 1150 EUR (advertised as hot price). Along with Landmark and Renderworks, VW 12 costs 2000 EUR. We don't have VW13 on sale so far.

Are we being ripped off here?

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Right. Obviously since my active MapInfo-days, the price has come down. In 1994 I paid for MapInfo almost three times the price of MiniCAD and got a very, very simple program (compared with MiniCAD.)

So, the simple MapInfo still costs 50% more than the sophisticated VectorWorks. You'd be ripped off buying MapInfo (although it is a far better GIS program than ArcView of which I would not pay more than a shareware fee of 20 ?. One only needs to do a SHAPE-format export from & import to VW to know why...)

Well, whatever. One of these days I might have a fresh look at the buffer object for VW. Despite your clever workaround, in my line of work a buffer should be dynamic, ie. a "path" (polygon) PI-object that I could modify easily. Certain new features of VW and VectorScript may make this easier than it was 10 years ago.

So, thanks for reminding me about the subject!

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