BG-Map 2008 is Here

 

BG-Map 2008 was shipped in February, 2008.  Here’s a quick summary of some of the new features and improvements in this release.

 

Highlights

·         Duplicate Menus in AutoCAD – many of the menu items in the BG-Map window have been duplicated in the AutoCAD window, eliminating the need to switch back and forth between windows.  For example, “Generate” and “Look Up/Zoom.”

·         View On The Fly – This is a really useful new feature that allows you to generate a map of any area without first having to create a Defined View.  Just outline the area and click OK.

·         Automatic Installation of Updates and Fixes – As long as your computer is connected to the Internet, BG-Map 2008 will check for updates, download them, inform you and install them automatically.  It also keeps track of which updates have been installed.

·         Improved Help Screens – Help screens in BG-Map 2008 have improved formatting, and the text can be printed.

·         Simplified Reordering of Items in Plant List Formats, Facilities Management Report Formats, VQF Topics and Special Collections –It’s now easy to grab an item and move it up or down in the list.

·         Rotated Text – Rotate a plant accession number and name to make them fit in a crowded area.

·         Defined Views – “Show Some” – In the Defined Views setup window, in addition to “Show All”, there now an option to “Show Some.”  This will display the outlines of only selected Defined Views, making it much easier to see what you’re doing if you have many views defined.

·         BG-Map Saved Lists – You can now quickly and easily save lists of plants in BG-Map.  Select a list of plants using the BG-Map Search Tool or QuickFinder, and save it as a saved list, which you can use to create printed reports and maps.

·         VQF Additional Reports – You can now designate any Plant List Format to be available to VQF for displaying additional information about plants.  So, for example, if you wish to display where a plant was collected, you can.

·         VQF “Canned Tours” – Several users have asked for the ability to offer visitors pre-defined plant tours.  You can designate any Special Collection as a “Canned Tour”, which works just like a tour that the visitor selected.  And, the visitor can edit a canned tour by adding or deleting plants.

·         VQF More Topics and Special Collections Per Page – VQF now adjusts the number of Topic and Special Collection buttons displayed per page, based on your screen resolution, making more efficient use of the screen and reducing blank space.

·         VQF Memorial Alternate Names – You can now enter any number of alternate names such as maiden names,  nicknames and multiple last names for the memorial.  They are all searchable.

·         VQF Search by Characteristics Options to “Match All” or “Match Any” – When selecting plants by characteristics, the visitor can choose to match all selected criteria or any one selected criterion.

·         VQF Map Rotation – At some gardens the orientation of printed visitor maps does not match the orientation of the map used by BG-Map.  For example, in BG-Map, north may be up, but visitors may be used to looking at maps where west is up.  You can now rotate the maps produced by VQF to match the orientation of your printed visitor maps, making VQF even more user-friendly.

·         VQF Auto Login on Startup – You can now set up VQF to automatically log in on BG-Map startup.  This will allow a kiosk to automatically boot up and restart after a power failure or shutdown without any assistance from staff.

·         Facilities Management Tasks - can be assigned to Types directly from the Maintenance Tasks entry window.

·         Facilities Management Objects – surveyed with GPS or Total Station can be inserted into the map automatically along with plants.

·         Facilities Management Importing from a CSV File – You can now replace the automatically assigned Object Number with a number of your choosing.

And More…

·         Previous accession number is set as default in "Add a Plant to the Map."

·         When forcing full names on book maps, the text now appears at normal size.

·         Changed "fix acc num" to an edit table format.

·         Allow sorting lists of unmapped plants by Location.

·         Prompt for saving the basemap when exiting BG-Map (except in LT.)

·         Allow setting default Plant List Format separately for each user and setting the default from the List Plant window.

·         Fixed hang up on “pedit” sticking when generating maps.

·         Allow sorting memorial plant lists by "In Memory Of."

·         New option to add names and accession numbers for book maps showing "selected plants" (show all on map.)

·         On-screen preview of tour symbol types.

·         Added major taxon to searchable and reportable fields.

·         Added accession number to preselected tour plant lists in HTML format.

·         Replaced with numbers the yellow dots (tick marks) when mapping group plantings with GPS or Total Station.

·         Automatic check for any fonts that are not installed and delete them from the font list on startup.

·         Added combined repro-stat codes to the Garden Notepad editor.

·         In VQF, show multi-values for flower, fruit and foliage colors.

·         Removed the 250 plant restriction for VQF Special Collections.

·         Back button for VQF subtopics now goes back to the main topic, not to the home page.

·         Plus numerous other bug fixes and improvements.