FME 2011

The new release of FME 2011 is just about to be released. Hot of the press, Roger Aikema from FME has kindly sent me some early news on this new version. I thought I would share this with you too.

A few of the highlights from today’s FME 2011 release will include:

• New ability to work with LiDAR / point cloud data
• Major improvements with handling XML data
• REST API and scheduling added to FME Server
• Faster debugging with new “Inline Inspection”
• 9 new formats including LAS and ESRIJSON

You can expect more details from Dale Lutz on their blog at around 10am PST (and a press release at about the same time).

Once more FME demonstrates the major move of the geospatial industry toward the cloud. As a matter of fact FME announced support for all the major cloud platforms available; including: Windows Azure, Google Spreadsheet, etc

FME 2010 – Faster, simplier

FME 2010 from safe has just been released and it is now available for download.  The main highlights of this new release are:

• Faster. Safe claim that the version is around 19% faster on multi-core windows machines and an average of 4% faster for everything else. If you are working on large workspaces then you will also find that they load 16% faster. If you work with raster then you will be happy to know that FME 2010 uses about half the memory and is also up to 5% faster.
• Quick Add, a new capability which reduces the number of click required for building a workbench. They have also simplified the way the transformers are being built.
• Integrated online help is now available directly in the GUI, simplifying the search for help.

According to Geo Informatics FME has now an improved support for 3D format; including support for new support for Autodesk Civil 3D and common statistics formats IBM PASW (SPSS), R Statistical Data and SAS (Statistical Analysis System). FME now support over 250 formats.

It also includes additional support for popular data sharing such as OpenGIS KML (Google Earth and Maps), Adobe PDF and XML (including OpenGIS GML and CityGML). The new release also introduces support for 1,850 additional coordinate systems, bringing the new supported total to over 5,300.