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Endorsed By The NYS Department Of Environmental Conservation

October 27, 2000

Dear Sir:

We use ESRI products ArcInfo, ArcView and ArcPress. When we produce 'simple' plots any of the ESRI products can do a decent job. But we frequently produce large format (E size and larger, up to murals) color plots containing a wide variety of information:

  • full color images like aerial and satellite photographs
  • vector information, such as rivers, roads, etc.
  • labels, tables, logos, etc.
Our experience is that ESRI products do not handle plotting well:
  • There is no visual feedback as to color balance and saturation of different parts of the image, so the only possibility is trial and error.
  • The only way to test the results is to send the plot, at a large cost in time and materials.
  • The plotter driver and/or RIP engine in the ESRI products frequently misinterprets the Postscript code.
  • It is impossible to structure a large format job for a smaller printer (plot mosaics).
  • There is no way to separately affect vector and raster info within a large plot. The only solution is to go back to the application and adjust the problems there, another large cost in time.
  • All of the above requires the time of a highly trained plotter operator, given the lack of an easy to understand interface. 
Many of the plots that used to be produced by my staff can now be produced by our GIS users with the much richer interface of HyperXpress. HyperXpress has allowed us to separate our users into two types:
  • Experienced plotter users who control the scanner/plotter hardware, doing any combination of scanning/RIP*ping/plotting work. HyperXpress greatly increases the operator's productivity as compared to ESRI. 
  • Users at their own computers using ESRI software, who want to send a print job to the plotter, to be picked up later.  This is a more complex situation, in that the software/RIP/network/plotter combination has to work together to do the job. With HyperXpress, it does.
Main advantages:
  • Due to the lack of visual feedback from ESRI products, most of the jobs for users had to be produced with more specialized personnel. Expensive! HyperXpress has allowed us to increase the number of user-produced plots, with fewer test plots.
  • ESRI software does not support Unix as consistently as HyperXpress does.
  • ESRI tech support has been less than satisfactory. We have had little need of support from Pinebush, and when needed, the access to the software engineers has been fundamental.


Sincerely,

Ricardo López-Torrijos
GIS Program Development Coordinator
Water GIS - University at Albany GIS Lab