The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the state cartographic monopoly in the United Kingdom. NTF format, now replaced by more modern formats, in the past has been used by the OS to publish both drawings in the Land-Line series as well as surfaces in their DTM grid series. Manifold's NTF dataport will automatically create drawings or surfaces depending on the contents of the NTF. NTF files automatically provide coordinate system information.
To import from NTF format:
Choose File-Import from the main menu.
In the Import dialog browse to the folder containing data of interest.
Double-click the file ending in .ntf for the data of interest.
A variety of folders, tables and drawings will be created.
We can double-click on drawings or tables that are created to view them. For a more interesting display, we first create a new data source using a Bing street maps image server as shown in the Example: An Imageserver Tutorial topic. We then create a map and drag and drop the Bing layer into the map, and then we drag and drop a drawing into the map.
In the above, we have dropped a drawing into the map. It appears using the correct projection, using default formatting. Because the drawing combines points and lines, it looks cluttered.
We can zoom in for a closer look, eliminating the points with a quick use of the Select pane and the Delete key.. The drawing shows road lines in a town in the UK, along with parcel boundaries and the outlines of structures.
Use Folders - Importing NTF files can create many components. To keep those from being mixed into existing components in a project, first create a folder and then, with the focus on the folder (click the folder in the Project pane to highlight it), do the import. That will place all imported components into the folder.