Introduction to gvSIG CE and geo-processing with SEXTANTE

Terra GIS is offering a 4 hours introductory class/hands on workshop about gvSIG CE desktop GIS and Sextante at the WAURISA Conference in Tacoma on Monday May 7th, 2012, 1pm - 5pm.

gvSIG is a powerful desktop GIS system that is known for having a user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common data formats, both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working with geographic information (query tools, layout creation, geo-processing, networks, model builder, etc.) and provides excellent cartography and spatial analysis tools, and a wide range of spatial database connectivity. gvSIG CE is the open and international version that has many extensions such Sextante (raster and vector analysis), Raster and Remote sensing, and Network analysis natively integrated.

Preparations and downloads for workshops participants:
Prior to the workshop please download and copy to your system the gvSIG CE software and the workshop data using the links below. Note that Java is needed to run gvSIG and Sextante and is included in the gvSIG CE download for Linux and Windows, but is a separate download for some Mac operating systems .

Update Monday May 7th:

Picture from the workshop at WAURISA:

More information: Please contact us via email or call 206 905 1711 if you have additional questions

After the geo-processing library Sextante was made available for gvSIG, gvSIG CE, and for ArcGIS, a plugin for QGIS was released by Victor Olaya in cooperation with the QGIS community. Now the Sextante toolbox truly has the potential to become the most comprehensive and widely used GIS geo-processing tool that runs on almost any software platform and in almost any GIS software . Congratulations Victor and QGIS community !

For the plugin a rewrite of Sextante algorithms in python is being developed and will take some time to be completed. Currently the Sextante toolbox in QGIS provides access to Grass, Gdal, LASTtools, Sextante Modeler, OTB tools, R, SAGA, fTools and mmqgis. Lots more to come in the next months !

In today’s presentation at King County GIS Center User Group meeting (Seattle, WA, USA) I talked about two powerful free & Open source extensions for ArcGIS. Both of them were released in late 2011: SpatialKit for ArcMap and SEXTANTE for ArcGIS. These extensions offer functionality that is not available at the ArcView level to ArcGIS license owners. This talk will present the extensions and demonstrate many of their tools.

SpatialKit for ArcMap enables users to use PostGIS data directly in ArcGIS. This means that ArcGIS users can employ the power of the first-class, open source spatial database PostGIS in the same way they use proprietary databases to store, edit and retrieve spatial features via ArcSDE. SpatialKit for ArcMap does not require ArcSDE, ArcInfo, the new Spatial Data Server (SDS) technology, or ArcGIS server.

SEXTANTE is a spatial data analysis library written in Java. The SEXTANTE for ArcGIS extension makes it possible to use SEXTANTE (and SAGA GIS) tools directly in ArcGIS, including Model Builder. Together SEXTANTE and SAGA comprise hundreds of spatial analysis functions, including many that are otherwise available in ArcGIS only through proprietary extensions that require additional licenses, such as Spatial Analyst.

gvSIG CE was presented as a powerful Desktop GIS and at the same time a great alternative to use Sextante integrated with the Grass, and Saga GIS algorithms (Grass algorithms are not available for the ArcGIS extensions at the time of writing). In the near future a version of Sextante will be released that in addition integrates the use of R (Statistical package) algorithms from within Sextante.

downloads
presentation slides (PDF)
zip archive with the 2 extension software packages , documentation and all (45 MB)

external links
Spatial Kit for ArcMap
SEXTANTE
SEXTANTE for ArcGIS
gvSIG CE