Installation Questions

General Questions

Answers

I am using the Program with UiView.  I have registered the program, as required, but every time I run it, I am asked to register again

In order to run the Program with UiView, you are making use of a third-party component, PmapServer, that requires its own registration.  Registering Precision Mapping Streets and Traveler, does NOT automatically register PmapServer.

1. Run Precision Mapping by clicking on its own shortcut (not from UiView). If you do not get a prompt to register, then the program is already registered.

2. Run UiView.  When you are prompted to register, select the option to register over the Internet.  When the next registration dialog appears, take a look at the product code listed at the top of that dialog.  Does it start with "900", then that's the Registration for PmapServer, *not* Precision Mapping.   Follow the steps in the registration dialog, filling out all the information, as prompted, and you should get a new Serial Registration code for that component.

(This applies to both users of v8.1 and v8.1)

First, the location of where files are being stored from within the program, is controlled by the user.  When a File, Save dialog opens, the user can navigate to whatever drive folder they wish to save the file.

When looking for the "Program's Folder", for example when searching for the configuration file MAP.INI, in Vista the user needs to be aware of the following.

(a) If  the default settings are used when installing the program, then it is installed in the folder, C:\Program Files\Precision Mapping Streets and Traveler 8.1  (the version number would be 8.0 if you are running the earlier version of the program, or if you installed the v8.1 Data Update. So, the initial files are all placed in that folder.

(b) When a Vista user (other than Administrator) is running a program, it creates a virtual profile for that user and a folder in that profile for each program being executed.  That's where each user on the Vista system would find "their" personal configuration file, and that would be the default "Save To" folder, when saving files from within the program.

(c) These virtual folders are hidden by default, but the user can access them, if they want to, through Windows Explorer.  Please note that to do so, requires some simple modifications to your Windows System options.  Simple instructions are provided below, but this is a Vista feature, and you may want to read additional details in the Vista Help facilities.

• Click Start

• Click Control Panel  (Make sure Control Panel Home is selected on the left side)

• Click Appearance and Personalization

• Click Folder Options

• Select the View tab

• Under the Hidden Files and Folders section, make sure the Show Hidden Files and Folders option is selected

• Click OK to close the dialog

• Close the Control Panel dialog

Now, the virtual folder for the program can be found under,

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Precision Mapping Streets and Traveler 8.1

where UserName is your user name in Vista.

The problem with User Views compatibility with earlier versions was corrected soon after the release of v8.0, and was included in a service pack release to that version.  However, users who may not have updated to the latest build of 8.0, may still have this problem when updating to v8.1.  The compatibility issue came about because of the enhanced capabilities of v8.0, to accommodate a world View, i.e., positive and negative Lon/Lat values.  Without too many technical details, your older user views can be corrected to conform to the newer v8.0/v8.1 format by editting your map configuration (MAP.INI) file.

User Views are saved in the MAP.INI file, in your program’s folder, near the bottom of a file, in a section named, [UserViews]. Here is the correct format of the UserView lines.

Each line in that section is a User view. It starts with the word UserView, followed by the equal sign, followed by four fields of coordinates (11 characters each), followed by the view name.  Here is the detailed description of each line, identified by column numbers.

Cols 1-9:           UserView=

Cols 11-21:       Decimal Longitude with three digits to the left of the decimal. Values less than 100 degrees are left-padded by “0”.  Values in the Western hemisphere(negative) are preceded with a minus sign.

Cols 22-32:        Decimal Latitude, with three digits to the left of the decimal.  Values are preceded by “0”.  Values in the Southern hemisphere negative) are left-padded with a minus sign.

Cols 33-43:        Decimal Longitude with three digits to the left of the decimal.  Values less than 100 degrees are left-padded by “0”.  Values in the Western hemisphere (negative) are preceded with a minus sign.

Cols 44-54:        Decimal Latitude, with three digits to the left of the decimal.  Values are preceded by “0”.  Values in the Southern hemisphere negative) are left-padded with a minus sign.

 Cols 55-…:       The name of the View

Sample UserView lines (with guide line), colorized for emphasis…

UserView=XXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYXXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYName_of_view               

UserView=-092.228322042.1749800-091.652389041.8298230My Own View of an Area

The most likely case is that you did not uninstall previous versions of the program (most notably version 7.0) from your system prior to installing version 8.0.  Please note that the first screen of the v8.0 installation cautions the user to do that!  You may uninstall v8.0, uninstall v7.0 and then re-install v8.0 - in that order.  That should take care of it.

Solution: Because of the new implementation of increased security in Vista, the program needs to be run with the user logged on to the system as the Administrator (that is the account automatically created when Vista is installed), or by right-clicking on the programs icon and selecting the option to run it as the Administrator (if the user is logged on with a different user account). 

** Note that on many Vista installation, the Administrator account may be originally hidden, for Vista security purpose.  The link provided below contains information on how to access the Administrator account, if you are interested in doing so.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555910/en-us

Unfortunately, Vista has introduced a number of security *features* that play havoc with applications developed in earlier operating systems.  This appears to be a callback failure.  Although it appears that you will not be able to access the Help facility through the menus, because of this problem, you should be able to do so by simply pressing the {F1} function key.

The most likely culprit is the specification of the various fields, during the import process.  The Excel files that is being imported should contain each of the Address, City, State, ZipCode information in individual columns.   If a single column (cell) contains, for example, the City, State, ZipCode information, simply separated by commas, the import process will not work as intended.

For example, if your excel data is arranged as shown below, the import process will fail

If the excel data is organized this way, the import should be successful

The most common problem is that some of the imported points (addresses) have not geocoded properly and the Stop/Via point for the specific address has ended up with a Longitude and Latitude of 0,0, i.e., some point in the middle of the Atlantic.

This could be the result of improperly formatted data in the original data file, mistyped city, state names, etc. 

You can find out which stop points have the 0,0 coordinates, correct the error in the original data and re-import the file.  If you click on a stop point in the routing dialog and then momentarily rest the mouse pointer there, the coordinates of the highlighted point should be displayed.  Alternatively, if you have saved the points to a file, from the routing dialog, you can open and view that file with any text-editor program (it is a plain ASCII text file), and see which point coordinates are 0,0.

An error was discovered in the data file containing the street-level data for the state of California.  Downloading and installing Service Pack 1 will update the CA data file and will eliminate the "broken-road" problems some users were experiencing.

This problems was discovered and corrected in later release of ver. 7.0, but somehow made it's way back into ver. 8.0. It corrected and included in Service Pack 1, that you can download and install from this web page.  The limit should actually be 200 user views, not 20 or 100.

The program was attempting to determine if the data paths existed below inside the main folder of the program.  However, a flow in the design was bypassing the logic to then check any alternate locations for the data, until the user had accessed the Data Path configuration dialog.  The problem was corrected in Service Pack 1.

A problem was discovered in the treatment on "one-way" street segments during the routing calculations, which would result in a broken road network in Chicago and other major cities containing multiple one-way streets.  The problem was addressed in Service Pack 1.

UnderTow Software has nothing to do with the development, distribution and/or support, and has no relation with UiView, other than we know it works with Precision Mapping.  As far as we know, Version 8.0 *does* work with UiView.  For more detailed information you may visit one of the UiView support web sites, e.g.

• http://www.ui-view.org/uiview32/uivpmap.shtml

• http://www.ui-view.org/uiview32/PrecisionMapping8.htm

• http://wa8lmf.net/aprs/pmap8_notes.htm

Note: Please, do not call UnderTow Software with questions of how to make UiView run, or why you can't see maps when running UiView, etc.  UnderTow software is not familiar with UiView and cannot provide any support for it.

Note 2: This is only a Service Pack and not the full program. It requires that you have the original Precision Mapping Streets and Traveler v8.0 product already installed on your system.