Release History

10.3.0 - May 14, 2010

10.4.0 - October 22, 2010

Important Notes

Activating or Updating your USB License Key

If you are licensing MapScenes for the first time, or if you are upgrading from MapScenes 2006 or previous, you will need to activate your new USB License Key using the USB License Manager program on a computer with internet access.

If you are upgrading from MapScenes 2008/2010, you will need to update your existing USB License Key using the USB License Manager program on a computer with internet access.

A copy of the USB License Manager program is automatically installed with MapScenes 2010, or it can be installed separately onto another computer from your MapScenes 2010 installation disc or downloaded from our online Helpdesk system.

Please refer to the following topic for detailed instructions about activating or updating your key.

You might not be required to update your USB key to run certain MapScenes Service Pack updates. For a detailed explanation of MicroSurvey's Maintenance Subscription Support Plan (MSSP) program, and how we use product version numbers and USB keys, you can can refer to the following online article.

If your Maintenance Subscription has not yet expired, you can use the USB License Manager to update your key to work with the most current version. You can confirm the expiry date for the MSSP by going to the About screen found in the Help menu. Each USB License Key has its own maintenance subscription plan, so if you have multiple keys it is possible that they may each have a different expiry date. If your MSSP has expired, you can phone us at 1-800-668-3312 to renew it. Without a current maintenance subscription plan, you will not be able to update your key to work with the new version.

MicroSurvey Transfer Program for Evidence Recorder Users

Evidence Recorder users need to download a copy of the MicroSurvey Transfer program to simplify the process of transferring Evidence Recorder projects between your data collector and MapScenes 2010.

If you have a copy of MicroSurvey Transfer already installed from use with MapScenes 2008 or older, you will need to update it to recognize MapScenes 2010. Previous versions of MicroSurvey Transfer will NOT show MapScenes 2010 as a sync option in the Options screen.

The MicroSurvey Transfer program has not changed between MapScenes 2010 10.2.0 and MapScenes 2010 10.3.0. This is only necessary for users who are setting up communications between Evidence Recorder (any version) and MapScenes 2010 for the first time.

MicroSurvey Transfer can be installed from your MapScenes 2010 installation disc or downloaded from our online Helpdesk system.

Note: A copy of Microsoft ActiveSync (for Windows XP or earlier) or Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center (for Windows Vista or newer) must be installed before MicroSurvey Transfer can be installed. Both can be downloaded free from Microsoft.

MicroSurvey License Server for Network License Users

Users who have purchased a network license will need to install a copy of the MicroSurvey Network License software. The MicroSurvey Network License Server program has not changed since MapScenes 2008 8.0.0. This is only necessary for users who are setting up a MapScenes 2008 or newer network license for the first time.

If you have purchased a Network License and are setting it up for the first time, you can download the Network License Server application from our online Helpdesk system.

Note: You will be required to enter a password in order to install the Network License Server.

System Requirements

MapScenes 2010 is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP SP3, Microsoft Windows Vista SP2, and Microsoft Windows 7.

MapScenes 2010 does not have any hardware requirements above and beyond what is required by your version of Microsoft Windows, except for a compatible video card for the 3D Rendering, Capture Animation, and Point Cloud engine. Please refer to the following webpage for a list of compatible video cards, as indicated under the "OGL" column:
http://developer.techsoft3d.com/hoops/hoops-visualize/graphics-cards/

Windows Vista / Windows 7 Users

Run as Administrator Once

If installing on Windows Vista or Windows 7 you must run the program with "Elevated Admininstrator" enabled the first time MapScenes 2010 is run, even if you are already logged in with "Administrator" access on the computer. Once this is done once, MapScenes can be run by any user on the computer, including those who don't have administrative accounts.

To accomplish this, once the program is finished installing do the following:

1. Right click on the MapScenes 2010 icon.
2. Choose "Run as Administrator"
3. Open or create a new drawing.

What's This? Help

If you wish to use the MapScenes "What's This? Help" feature under Windows Vista or Windows 7, you will need to download and install an update from Microsoft. Please refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for more information.

Please note, that the main MapScenes Help file will work without this update.

Frequently Asked Questions

For a list of Frequently Asked Questions and Tips for New Users, please visit the MapScenes 2010 Frequently Asked Questions topic in our online helpdesk.

Upgrade Notes

For a guide on upgrading from a previous version of MapScenes, please visit the MapScenes 2010 Upgrade Notes topic in our online helpdesk.

Known Issues

For a list of known issues please visit the MapScenes 2010 Known Issues topic in our online helpdesk.

Training Movies

All MapScenes training movies can be watched online, or downloaded for offline viewing, from our movies page:

http://helpdesk.microsurvey.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/379

10.3.0 Notes

Initial Release - Nothing to report...

10.4.0 Notes

New Features

• Point Cloud Linework: Automatic Road Line Extraction
  • Automatically extract road linework from your point cloud by picking two points along a painted line
  • Choose between drawing a single line down the middle, or two parallel lines along the edges
• Point Cloud Linework: Draw 3D Curves
  • Draw 3D Curves in the point cloud (3D Polylines with interpolated vertices) by picking points on the curve. Toggle between straight, curvey, and 3-point arc segments while drawing complex 3D linework.
• Point Cloud Linework: Highest/Lowest/Nearest Snap Modes
  • When snapping to points in the point cloud, you can now snap to the highest, lowest, or nearest point within a specified snap tolerance distance. This is useful for selecting points along the top of curb, bottom of curb, etc
• AutoCAD 2010/2011 DWG/DXF Support
  • MapScenes PointCloud can now automatically convert and open 2010 DWG/DXF drawing files, then Save them as R12-2007 DWG/DXF format.
  • Or, use the standalone IntelliConvert conversion utility to manually convert R12-2010 DWG/DXF files.
• 3D Curves
  • Draw new 3D Curves (3D Polylines with interpolated vertices) by picking points on the curve. Toggle between straight, curvey, and 3-point arc segments while drawing complex 3D linework.
  • New command: _3DCURVE (MsTools | Draw 3D Curve)
  • Convert existing 3D Polylines with straight segments to 3D Curves.
  • New command: _3DPOLY_TO_3DCURVE (MsTools | Convert 3D Polyline to 3D Curve)

Notable Improvements

• Active Coordinate Editor - When running the Change Selection Layer command, the four checkboxes for Point, Elevation, Description, Point Number are now unchecked by default, to prevent accidently changing their layers.
• AutoMap Library - You can now automatically draw an Ellipse, Double Ellipse, or Rectangle around your Point ID labels.
• AutoMap Library - You can now specify X and Y offset distances for the Description, Point ID, and Elevation labels in the AutoMAP Library, this will help with spacing out the labels for Design and Stake points, etc.
• AutoMap Library - You can now process a point range (pt..pt) in addition to the previous method of processing all connections
• AutoMap Library - A Save prompt has been added when pressing the "New Library" button, to avoid accidental data loss while customizing your Automap Library if you accidentally click "New Library" instead of "New".
• Locked Points - The "Protected" column in the Active Coordinate Editor is now relabeled as "Locked" to avoid confusion between it and the global Point Protection feature.
• Locked Points - A "Locked Point" checkbox is now available in the Store & Edit Points dialog, which corresponds to the "Locked" (formerly "Protected") option in the Active Coordinate Editor.
• MS Backup - A save prompt has been added at the start of the MSBACKUP command, because it will copy the most recently saved drawing. Previously, you had to manually Save before Backup.
• Project Manager - A "Browse For Drawing" function has been added to the Project Manager, which uses a standard Windows file browser dialog to select your drawing file.
• Translated Help Files - Help files can now be translated on-the-fly and read in 31 different languages. (An internet connection is required, high-speed recommended.)
• Traverse Re-coordination - A "Do not replace descriptions with field values" option has been added, this will prevent point descriptions in your database from changing when a traverse file is recoordinated.
• Updated IntelliCAD Engine - The IntelliCAD 6.6 CAD engine has been updated to the latest version for improved performance and stability.
• Updated Rendering Engine - The HOOPS 3D rendering engine has been updated to the latest version for improved rendering performance and stability.
• Point Cloud Linework - when specifying the point description to use with the "Store Points" option enabled, descriptions are now displayed directly from the Automap Library.
• Point Cloud Linework - a "Set Origin to Target" button is not available for Slices and Reference Planes, like with Cutting Cubes.

Important Fixes

• MicroSurvey Fixes
  • [3885] Curvey Leaders - When using the Curvey Leader command, the drawing screen may flicker or disappear requiring you to close and reopen the drawing
  • [3693] Leica GSI Import - A crash could occur due to the GSI file being improperly formatted, an error message now appears instead
  • [3337] Menu Stability - When exiting and restarting the program, some of the menus could disappear if the profile was still being written out on exit while being read in on startup
  • [3309] Read-Only Files - When a drawing that is In Use is opened by a second user in Read-Only mode, the database is no longer opened for the read-only copy which prevents changes to the read-only copy from corrupting the live copy.
  • [2384] Rescale Complete Drawing - A crash could occur if the drawing was missing certain extended entity data on entities referenced in the database
  • [2730] Speed/Performance - If Active Coordinate Editor was open, if Hot Toggles was open, or if IPN Labels were on there was a major slowdown issue when storing/editing points for example when performing an RTS calculation, Locking/Unlocking Points, importing an ASCII file, or importing an Evidence Recorder project
  • [3373] Surface Modeling - A crash could occur when extracting cross sections, if the surface name contained a space
  • [3082] Surface Modeling - A crash could occur when removing points from DTM via the Active Coordinate Editor, if the drawing contains a layer called dont_use_me
  • [2961] Surface Modeling - The "Enable Range" contour configuration option checkbox behaviour was backwards, making it confusing to set the Minimum and Maximum values
  • [2917] Surface Modeling - The "Densify Step Size" extraction option had a display issue making the Auto vs Size options confusing to select
  • [3200] Surface Modeling - A crash could occur when importing a surface from an XML file containing data in an unrecognized format
  • [xxxx] Various broken Help buttons throughout the program have been corrected
  • [xxxx] Various spelling errors throughout the program have been corrected
  • [4023] Active Coordinate Editor - drawings last saved in MicroSurvey CAD 2008 v8.0.0 would not display any point coordinates in the Active Coordinate Editor.
  • [2069] Active Coordinate Editor - A crash could occur if the length of the filename plus the point id was very long.
  • [4009] Capture Animation - When opening an animation (*.ani) file, there was no way to browse into another folder.
  • [2264] File I/O - A crash could occur when opening a drawing from a folder with write access denied.
  • [2396] File I/O - A crash could occur when opening then saving a drawing file that is read-only.
  • [3894] PCI Conversion Utility - LAS 1.1 files may not process correctly.
  • [3914] Point Cloud File I/O - Opening some LAS 1.0 files could result in a crash.
  • [3876] Point Cloud Interface - PCLW window does not appear when opened if it was previously positioned on a second monitor which is no longer present.
  • [4016] Point Cloud Interface - an error message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" could occur when closing and reopening a point cloud.
  • [4040] Point Cloud Interface - Some marker shapes did not appear for all graphics cards, so points and/or grips may not appear.
  • [4029] Point Cloud Store Points - Line and Arc tools did not check for existing end points when storing points.
  • [4035] Point Cloud Store Points - Next point ID did not update immediately after accepting linework.
  • [3874] Point Cloud Surface Modeling - TIN Visualize option may not visualize the entire surface model
  • [4006] Point Cloud Surface Modeling - Non-English Regional Settings which use a comma as a decimal marker caused errors in parsing coordinates, like "1000,00,1000,00,100,00" instead of "1000.00,1000.00,100.00".
  • [4018] Project Units - when opening a drawing with angular units set to Grads, or when creating a new drawing using a template in Grads, it was automatically being changed to DMS format instead.
  • [4028] Traverse Recoordination - When importing a RAW/RW5 file containing resections is missing an LS record this can result in erroneous point elevations, if an expected LS record is not found a warning message is now displayed.
• IntelliCAD Fixes
  • [82466] A crash can occur when zooming/panning with the mouse while the program is under stress
  • [83110] A crash can occur when an sds_entget command is run on an SORTENTSTABLE entity (for example, this occurs after undoing a draworder command)
  • [85143] A crash can occur while moving entities
  • [82468] Audit/Recover - does not reset the count of objects audited, so the entity count ends up being multiplied in subsequent audits
  • [82568] Audit/Recover - auditing a corrupted drawing containing specific errors can cause it to lose layouts
  • [80930] Blocks - A crash can occur when using the "Previous" selection set after exploding a block
  • [82737] Blocks - A crash can occur when Unloading and Reloading an Xref
  • [82851] Blocks - Blocks with "Uniform" scale option do not display correctly when mirrored
  • [82919] Blocks - Blocks with a negative extrusion vector (3d rotation) cannot be moved using Grips
  • [83128] Blocks - A crash can occur when selecting Unnamed blocks for COPYCLIP and WBLOCK commands
  • [84631] Blocks - A crash can occur while purging anonymous blocks
  • [83083] Dimensions - Angular Dimensions can temporarily display incorrectly while moving via grips, for example showing 89°59'60.0" instead of 90°00'00.0"
  • [83126] Dimensions - DIMLIN and DIMALI Dimensions do not allow you to use entity snaps for the second point
  • [83366] Dimensions - AutoCAD MLEADER Multileader entities do not display
  • [85285] Display - REDRAW / REGEN difference in layout tab on attached drawing
  • [85330] Display - mouse cursor can disappear in certain situations
  • [83044] Entity Properties - A message "The parameter is incorrect" will pop up when selecting the Layers list on the Entity Properties toolbar, if entities from multiple layers are currently selected
  • [83768] Entity Properties - When changing color of a polyline through the Color list on the Entity Properties toolbar, too many entities can change color
  • [83869] Entity Selection - Window Polygon selection method selects all of the inserts in the drawing
  • [81746] File I/O - After printing, printer settings can bog down saving of drawings
  • [83065] File I/O - Cannot open any files where the filename contains a % character
  • [84487] File I/O - Attached drawing has trouble saving
  • [84925] File I/O - 2010 DWG/DXF IntelliConvert utility implemented for converting 2010 DWG drawings to 2007 DWG
  • [85352] File I/O - 2010 DWG/DXF automatic file conversion method implemented on opening drawings
  • [83164] Hatching - Associative Hatch Patterns are unassociated if the boundary is grip edited
  • [83737] Hatching - Hatch Pattern previews do not display in Windows x64 (or anytime the installation folder contains parentheses)
  • [84818] Hatching - Color SLD files are displayed as Black and White
  • [83062] Lisp - "command" command loses precision of numeric arguments being passed in
  • [83367] Lisp - A crash can occur when unloading a custom application
  • [83370] Lisp - "command" command is not correctly cancelled by escape
  • [83743] Lisp - Pasting a multiline Lisp expression into the commandline to run it does not work
  • [83744] Lisp - Entities on a locked/frozen layer can be erased via Lisp
  • [84729] Lisp - Corrupted pointer passed to SDS_CBCMDEND callback when a command results in changing the current drawing
  • [85551] Lisp - Function could improperly terminate if offset is called with an empty selection set
  • [79366] Printing - Print Window selection does not allow you to use entity snaps for the second corner
  • [81746] Printing - After printing, printer settings can bog down saving of drawings
  • [81964] Printing - Print Window area does not cut off entities at the selected window edge
  • [82455] Printing - Print Area option does not work if "Save changes to Layout" is not turned on
  • [82503] Printing - Ricoh/NRG/Nashuatec printers can cause the program to crash on print
  • [82662] Printing - Ricoh/NRG/Nashuatec printers can cause the program to crash on save
  • [82833] Printing - Print settings are not properly saved into layouts
  • [82312] Printing - When using "Print upside down" option from layout space, model space entities may not appear through viewport
  • [83155] Printing - After printing, entities are displayed using the printed color from .CTB print style table file until a REGEN is run
  • [84258] Printing - Specified paper tray is not remembered
  • [85271] Printing - Standard print scales are not saved properly
  • [84341] Raster Images - A crash can occur when clipping image if an invalid option is specified
  • [82433] Snaps - Entity snaps do not work properly for PFACE entities within a block, if UCS is not World
  • [82058] Snaps - Apparent Intersection entity snap does not work for extended intersections
  • [81765] Snaps - Polar Tracking interferes with window selection
  • [83371] Snaps - Polar tracking is turned off after temporary using ORTHO snap with SHIFT key
  • [82168] Text - changing Justification property of multiple text entities causes their insertion points to change to 0,0,0
  • [82513] Text - MTEXT containing negative indentation does not display correctly
  • [82681] Text - Text containing Russian fonts display the last character incorrectly
  • [83162] User Profiles - A crash can occur when using custom menu commands with an invalid reference
  • [82891] User Profiles - When running multiple instances of the program each with a different current profile, the profiles can contaminate each other in the registry
  • [82792] User Profiles - Custom menus containing a very large number of commands with many toolbars and submenus do not work, picking the commands at the bottom of the menu may not do anything
  • [84616] Viewports - layout space viewports can be automatically activated
  • [82567] Viewports - -LAYER Freeze command in a layout viewport causes the layer to be Frozen in All Viewports not just the Current Viewport