MAPSCO Significantly Reduces Cost of Type Placement Using Label-EZ

Plainsboro, New Jersey - September 29, 2003

MAPSCO, Inc. of Dallas, Texas, the largest map retail and publishing chain in the southwest, has implemented an efficient, cost-saving workflow using Label-EZ™ and Label-Edit™ for generating maps with the highest quality type placement. Label-EZ's ease of use, compatibility with MicroStation/Oracle databases, and flexible type-placement rules all combined to make one of Mapsco’s more recent map products the most efficient in cost and time savings since the transition to the digital medium.

Mapsco's products are known for having the highest quality of type placement and accuracy in their core markets. Their high-quality maps have been generated through countless hours of effort and attention to type-placement detail that, until recently, was a manual process. The level of quality produced through the automated type-placement process of Label-EZ was more remarkable, accurate, and aesthetically reliable than any automated type placement software Mapsco had tried in the past. Mapsco has been able to use the database connectivity with database sources from various government agencies where the source vector data originated.

In concert with Label-EZ's robust and easy-to-use rule sets for type placement, Mapsco has been able significantly to reduce the amount of effort in type placement on its most recent street guide publication. During the publishing of the McLennan Street Guide, Mapsco was able to use Label-EZ on datasets whose quality varied from excellent to almost unacceptable. The Street Guide involved approximately 16,000 separate labels. Mapsco’s estimate for retrieving database information and placing a label manually is about 2 minutes per label. As such, the 16,000 labels would have been expected to take 533 hours to place manually. With the help of Label-EZ, the overall time spent on placing labels was reduced to 50% of the original time. The time spent was mainly on clean-up and reworking of occasionally unacceptable or less-than-ideal type placements.

“Label-EZ was remarkably easy to install and configure with the variety of database sources with which we had to work. The rule set for type placement was robust and we were able to configure the majority of type placement situations that confronted us for the street guide project.” raves Bob Trager, GIS Analyst, Mapsco, Inc.

“Having seen the output from other automated label placement applications, I was impressed when our Director obtained a sample of Label-EZ's output. When I analyzed Mapsco’s use of Label-EZ during the publication of the McLennan Street Guide, I was even more impressed. Topping it all off, I can see our decision to purchase Label-EZ will save Mapsco many thousands of dollars in future production costs.” says Patty Rasmussen, Manager of Cartography, Mapsco, Inc.