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autoBound Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. What is autoBound?
A. autoBound is a redistricting and reapportionment system.  The primary goal of the software is to support the tedious and time consuming task of creating districts.

Q. How does autoBound work?
A. Simply stated, autoBound helps users assign small polygon units together to create districts.  For example, city Blocks can be grouped to create a voting district.  Once the assignment is complete, GIS processing is performed to remove internal polygon lines to create the district boundary.

Q. Does autoBound only work automatically?
A. No. The automated engine was developed to give users an additional tool during the redistricting process.  It by no means replaces autoBound's extensive manual editing tools.  Users can create district plans without the use of the automated tool or create partial plans using manual tool and have the automated model complete the plan or create a full plan and have the automated model refine the plan.

Finally, there are cases where the automated model is not suitable for application.  Legislative redistricting and reapportionment as an example, involve decisions which can not be easily modeled using a computer program and would not be suitable for automation.

Q. How can autoBound address the needs of redistricting in different industries?
A. We realized early on in the development of autoBound that while certain redistricting functions are used across the board, regardless of the industry, other functions were industry specific.  Therefore, There are currently four "flavors" of autoBound customized to industry specific needs:

• AutoBound Legislative Software - specialized for use in Legislative redistricting and reapportionment.  Includes ability to create plans using data from multiple levels of geography (i.e. Blocks, Block Groups, Tracts and Counties), Tiger import, Census Bureau Equivalency Files, sophisticated reporting environment.
• AutoBound for Police and Fire - specialized for use in creating police and fire beats/districts.   Includes tools for import of Computer Aided Dispatch files, identification of closest response beat etc.
• AutoBound for School Attendance Areas - specialized for use in creating school attendance boundaries.  Includes additional tools for import of data from Mainframes and Relational Database Management Systems.   Also includes additional charting and reporting tools.
• AutoBound for Territory Alignment - specialized for use in business functions such as sales territory alignment, customer service districts etc.  Includes additional data and enhanced support for export to Office automation software such as Word, Excel and Lotus 123.

Q. What are the systems requirements for autoBound?
A. As with any GIS based system, larger data sets require larger processing capability.  However, for most applications, the following configuration should provide more than satisfactory performance.

450 MHz Pentium
Windows 00/NT
96 MB RAM
Color graphics 4 MB SVGA