FME 2013 Has Landed!

On the evening of August 5th, 2012, the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted into cheers and tears as the Mars rover Curiosity successfully touched down on Mars and sent back its first images, the culmination of years of work by a talented team. We have a pretty darn talented team here at Safe Software too – and every year, we celebrate their efforts and the launch of a better-than-ever version of FME. Here are a few of the highlights for 2013!

Every release brings new formats, and notable this year are the addition of non-spatial formats including Salesforce(R), Socrata, and CouchDB(TM). Plus, you can now read and write zip files! Esri Shape files can now be written with spatial indexes, and of course we’ve kept up to date with the latest releases of your favorite GIS, CAD, and database applications.

Smart-Delete mode is a new usability feature in FME Desktop that will save you both time and wear-and-tear on your mouse-clicking finger by automatically repairing connections when a transformer is deleted. Improved zooming tools and new shortcuts make navigation a breeze.

As 3D data becomes ever more popular and available, we’ve enhanced that toolkit with new format support including X3D (VRML), Autodesk(R) Infrastructure Modeler, and CityGML 2.0 plus ADE Extensions. New 3D transformers SolidBuilder, SurfaceBuilder, and SurfaceOnSurfaceOverlayer assist in constructing 3D geometry, and the GeometryValidator provides powerful QA abilities for both 3D and 2D geometries.

Point cloud handling also has some new tools. The PointCloudExpressionEvaluator performs calculations on components like color, intensity, and number of returns, while the PointCloudFilter operates in a similar fashion to the TestFilter, enabling you perform tests on color and intensity and manipulate the results. Six new point cloud formats have been added, including ASTM E57.

This is just a sampling of What’s Great in FME 2013! You can delve into the details with Mark Ireland, the FME Evangelist at www.safe.com/Evangelist2013, or view the “Unveiling FME 2013: A Special Launch Day Event” webinar at www.safe.com/Launch2013. Congratulations to the FME team on another job well done!