Jacques Paris
September 2001
I have tried to create a documentary base that will be a reliable source of information about the ways to use Grid Engine functions in MapBasic. The key document, "MAPINFO GRID ENGINE, MapBasic calls to the MIGRID.DLL" is a simple list of the various functions and their arguments, all redefined using the MapBasic language (I owe a major thank you to Andrew Dressel who helped me sorting through some hairy issues). It is supported by a set of 4 MB scripts documented in "MAPINFO GRID ENGINE, MapBasic scripts using MIGRID.DLL functions".
view MapBasic calls to the MIGRID.DLLin PDF format
view MapBasic scripts using MIGRID.DLL functions in PDF format
download MIGRID_MB.zip
MIGRID_MB.zip contains both PDF documents (GE_MB_calls and GE_MB_scripts) plus the mb files for the 4 examples
But these documents are not really enough to know what is required for an efficient use of these functions. The details about the functions are given in the original GridEngine.doc distributed by MapInfo. A more elaborate MB script (from which most of the examples have been drawn) has been offered some time ago by Andrew Dressel; this script has been more recently modified by Bill Thoen and is now GridTools version 3.1.
GridEngine.htm (a format change done by Bill Thoen) and GridTools v3.1 are offered in a zip file (GridTools.zip) that B. Thoen has deposited in the DirectionsMag free tools section.
download GridTools.zip from the DirectionsMag site
I have written a more elaborate application based on GridTools: InfoExMig adds the possibility to export a whole or a part of a MIG file into a plain MI format. This app opens the way at using the GridEngine as an interpolator and recycling its output in a plain vector environment for further analysis; a quite effective link has already been made with applications based on the CellMap concept (as explained in a chapter of "My (MI) Bag'oTricks" and implemented with CellMap.mbx; for both see the PPCC section of this site). InfoExMig is still at a beta stage.
download InfoExMig.zip
For those that would like to know about building a new handler for some MI grids, they will have to find the GridHandler.exe archive file that contains documents and scripts to compose a new handler, but as the language used in not MapBasic, it is beyond the scope of this document.