Toucan Navigate 2007 - Getting Started

Here's a quick tutorial on how to get started with Toucan Navigate 2007, which we've made available this weekend.

1. Download the bits by clicking on the download button here. It's only a 2 mb download (if you already have Microsoft's dot.net framework 2.0 installed).

2. Download, extract and save the sample files. There are three files (counties.dbf, counties.shp and fast food franchises.csv). These three files take up 1.5 mb of disk space.

3. Start the application and then select Add -> File from the Home (or the Format) menu and load the Counties file.

4. In the next step of the wizard, you will be prompted to select fields. Change only the Style field by selectingState_Name from the drop down list.

5. In the next step you can select a specific color for each or any of the States. Optionally you can just click Next and then finish once you have seen the preview. You should see all the counties now displayed on top of the Virtual Earth map.

6. Go to the Format menu. In the Object Style Section you should see one style for each of the States. You can now select a State and change its color by clicking on the Fill Color.

7. Now you can zoom in or out by scrolling your mouse wheel or dragging your mouse from top left to bottom right while holding the right button down (in) or vice-versa for zooming out.

8. If you want to make the Counties file semi-transparent, click the Edit button in the Map Layers group and then change the Transparency value from 255 to 100 or so.

You should now be looking at a map similar to this one:

Try the same steps with the Fast Food Franchises .csv file and select Company as the Style. You should be on your way to taking advantage of Toucan Navigate by now. If you still have issues please log your questions in our Toucan Navigate Forum.