Note: This is an extra-cost transformer, available from Safe Software. Please contact sales@safe.com or call 604-501-9985.
MRF Geosystems Corporation (www.mrf.com) has produced cleaning software and made it available to FME users to apply to data as it is transformed between arbitrary input and output formats.1Portions of this work are the intellectual property of the MRF Geosystems Corporation and are used under license. Copyright © 2006 MRF Geosystems Corporation. All rights reserved.
The MRFCleaner repairs geometry, particularly during data migration from CAD to GIS, and is built upon the MRFCleanFactory, which is an integration of MRF’s cleaning technology into FME.
The MRFCleaner fixes geometric problems in input data such as line overshoots and undershoots within the user-specified tolerance. It is useful for multi-layer and multi-tolerance three-dimensional data cleaning. Typical applications include the correction of utility maps, parcel maps, topographic maps and resource maps as data is migrated from one system to another.
Group By Mode
Process At End (Blocking): This is the default behavior. Processing will only occur in this transformer once all input is present.
Process When Group Changes (Advanced): This transformer will process input groups in order. Changes of the value of the Group By parameter on the input stream will trigger processing on the currently accumulating group. This may improve overall speed (particularly with multiple, equally-sized groups), but could cause undesired behavior if input groups are not truly ordered.
Considerations for Using Group By
There are two typical reasons for using Process When Group Changes (Advanced) . The first is incoming data that is intended to be processed in groups (and is already so ordered). In this case, the structure dictates Group By usage - not performance considerations.
The second possible reason is potential performance gains.
Performance gains are most likely when the data is already sorted (or read using a SQL ORDER BY statement) since less work is required of FME. If the data needs ordering, it can be sorted in the workspace (though the added processing overhead may negate any gains).
Sorting becomes more difficult according to the number of data streams. Multiple streams of data could be almost impossible to sort into the correct order, since all features matching a Group By value need to arrive before any features (of any feature type or dataset) belonging to the next group. In this case, using Group By with Process At End (Blocking) may be the equivalent and simpler approach.
Note: Multiple feature types and features from multiple datasets will not generally naturally occur in the correct order.
As with many scenarios, testing different approaches in your workspace with your data is the only definitive way to identify performance gains.
Editing Transformer Parameters
Using a set of menu options, transformer parameters can be assigned by referencing other elements in the workspace. More advanced functions, such as an advanced editor and an arithmetic editor, are also available in some transformers. To access a menu of these options, click 
beside the applicable parameter. For more information, see Transformer Parameter Menu Options.
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Keywords: MRFCleaner3D