MapInfo Pro

Last week, I was on a call with an existing customer. They had recently upgraded from MapInfo Pro v15.0 to v23.0 and wanted to know whether there were workflows they could improve after the upgrade.

We covered a lot of ground in that call, but I wanted to mention one small thing that made a big difference for the customer.

They were maintaining service areas for repair engineers. When they changed one, they used the Erase function to remove the overlap for the neighboring district. Sometimes, they erased from the wrong district and had to do it all over again.

When we mentioned that MapInfo Pro has a way to move duplicate nodes in the same layer, they were all ears.

After setting MapInfo Pro up to move duplicate nodes in the same layer, the user tried it out and said, "Look at that! I'm unstoppable. Perfect - well, that makes that a lot easier."

Sometimes, it's the smallest changes that make the biggest difference.

Moving Nodes in a Polygon

When you are modifying polygons by moving individual nodes, there are a few steps to get started.

First, you need a map with the relevant layer, and the layer must also be made editable.

With the Selector tool, you can now select and drag a node to a different position by holding down the left mouse button and releasing the mouse button when the node is at its new location.

Notice that the borders of the neighboring polygons aren't moved at the same time.

You can now select the neighboring polygon and also move the node in this polygon. In practice, you don't just move one node; you move several, and then it gets tricky to make the same changes in the neighboring polygon or polygons.

Moving Duplicate Nodes in the Same Layer

But there is a different approach, as I mentioned at the beginning of the article. A clever one, in fact.

Open Backstage in MapInfo Pro via the Pro tab, then click the Options tab and select Map Preferences.

In the Map Preferences dialog, go to the Editing tab.

Here you can find the Move Duplicate Nodes in setting. By default, it is set to the None of the Layers option. If you switch it to the the Same Layer option, it will help when moving nodes shared by neighboring polygons.

If you made the same change with this setting enabled, you would have seen the following result: The nodes are moved in both polygons, making the change in both polygons at the same time.

DrawTools: Move Nodes

DrawTools adds a control to the Nodes dropdown that acts as a shortcut to Map Preferences, making it easier to control the behavior.

This makes it easier to turn this map preference on and off.

MapCAD: Move Duplicate Nodes in Different Layers

MapCAD, the add-in adding cad-like capabilities to MapInfo Pro, takes this to a different level. It includes a tool that lets you move duplicate nodes across multiple layers.

The Move Duplicate Nodes tool can also be found in the Nodes dropdown on the Spatial tab.

With this tool, you can draw a line from an existing node to the new position of the node.

MapCAD will now check whether corresponding nodes exist in other layers and, if so, move them across relevant layers.

This is useful if you have multiple layers sharing nodes. That could be sales regions and sub-regions, or districts. Typically, the regions would be composed of sub-regions, with shared outer borders.

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Peter Horsbøll Møller
Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
Precisely | Trust in Data
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