MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS is a lightweight open source desktop GIS for Microsoft Windows that is built upon the DotSpatial Library.

This project is currently a work in progress. It is actively under development at Idaho State University together with our collaborators. The goal is to construct a lightweight GIS based entirely on Dotspatial and able to be installed, updated, and maintained through the Microsoft ClickOnce system. This should allow users to download and install MapWindow 6 on any Windows computer - even without administrator privileges (e.g. in a computer lab setting).

The Open Source MapWindow GIS project team also manages a widely used desktop GIS application, MapWindow 4.x which is hosted at www.MapWindow.org. Source code for MapWindow 4 is on the MapWindow 4 CodePlex site. The MapWindow project includes an end user desktop application that is extensible through the writing of plugins written in .NET, as well as an ActiveX control project called MapWinGIS.ocx. This project has been highly successful and continues to grow through adoption and contributions by individuals, companies, agencies, etc.

If you need a stable free GIS for Windows, please use MapWindow 4. If you want to try a work in progress and/or help develop the .NET only version of MapWindow, then please download MapWindow 6. 

Key features of MapWindow 6 Alpha Desktop GIS

• Fully .Net (no COM registration or "DLL hell")
• Vastly extended symbology set
  • Stacks of Symbols
  • Schemes based on attributes
  • Point decorations
  • Symbols from scalable system fonts
• Object Oriented Code
  • Perform overlays, intersections, directly with features.
  • FeatureSet.DataTable is a System.Data.DataTable.
  • OGC Geometries
• Comprehensive Plug-in Model
  • Plug-in interfaces have events like normal objects
  • Interfaces are complete, so if you can do it with a class, you can do it with an interface.
  • Control virtually everything directly through the plug-in interface
• Components
  • All components provided through the MapWindow.dll
  • Custom GIS can be built from components in the designer (No code necessary)
  • The Plug-in capability is in the ApplicationManager