Cartographica™ is a Geographic Information System (GIS) package for the Macintosh. It is used to create, analyze, explore, manipulate and present geospatial data.
Cartographica's most basic unit of information is an Object. An object is a container for information. Usually, we represent an object as a point, line, or area. Point data is the most basic and represents a location in 2d or 3d space. Line data is the next most complex and represents a series of points in a particular direction which are connected. Area data is the most complex data and represents a series of points which surround an area, optionally containing "holes" that cut areas out.
Data Objects
In Cartographica (as is standard for GIS packages), data is organized into Layers. A Layer may consist of one type of data (point, line, or area), and contains one or more objects of each type. Each of these objects usually contains geospatial information (one or more sets of X,Y and possibly Z coordinates) as well as optional additional data. It is the attachment of the additional data to the geospatial information that makes a GIS like Cartographica so powerful. By using the geospatial data, correlations can be made between information in the optional data, leading to informative maps and insightful data analysis.
Layers alone and Composited