CARIS™ is pleased to announce the release of CARIS S-57 Composer™ 3.0, a desktop application for the production of electronic navigational products, including Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC), Additional Military Layers (AML), Inland Electronic Navigational Charts (IENC) and Digital Nautical Charts (DNC).

For the first time users can now experiment with creating S-100 features within an existing production environment enabling them to do much more than simply convert data. Users can gain familiarity with the new complex and multiplicity attribute types, work with information types, assign a S-100 portrayal to features and work with the expanding registry of S-100 product specifications.

Utilizing the same workflows for creating S-57 and VPF products, users will be able to create sample S-100 datasets from scratch or convert existing S-57 and DNC data. The S-100 data can then be exported in formats like GML for immediate use in a range of geospatial applications.

"The ability to create and export S-100 products in S-57 Composer is a significant milestone for CARIS and the hydrographic industry. As a member of the IHO technical working group on the new data standard CARIS is committed to implementing new developments of the S-100 framework into our software," said Cameron McLeay, Product Manager of S-57 Composer at CARIS. "Using S-57 Composer 3.0 users will be able to reap the full benefits of the new, richer data models supporting the creation of a wide variety of S-100 products."

In addition to S-100 support, the latest release of S-57 Composer includes many new functions for feature mapping, extended support for Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and other data formats and a series of system improvements.