Which GIS application can group lines into polygons?

I'm looking for a GIS package that can take a map made of colored lines and
draw a layer of colored polygons on top of it so that all the green lines are
covered by green polygons and blue lines are covered by blue polygons, etc.

Here's a small example:
This image shows the original map with about 20 lines in 6 colors:
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p276/Tom8192/lines.png
In the new map, I only need 8 polygons with the same 6 colors to cover all 20
lines:
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p276/Tom8192/polygons.png
Lighter colors can cover darker colors but not the other way around. Polygons
can also cover whitespace since there is an implicit giant white polygon
covering the entire map. The goal is to have as few polygons as possible.

I need to run this coversion 3 or 4 times per day as the lines change their
colors and then subtract the new polygon file from the old one to get a map
with only the polygons that have been added, deleted, or changed.

Does anyone know of any package that can do this? I've tried looking at the
major ones like ESRI, MapInfo, Manifold, etc. but the number of products and
features is just so overhelming that it's virtually impossible to tell if any
of them has this one simple polygon grouping function which is really the only
function I need.

--Tom.

This should be possible by first grouping the lines and then creating a
buffer (eventually removing holes). Defining the exact drawing order may
require all polygons to be stored in seperate layers. I don't know how to
define which colours are light / dark.

It should all be possible with any of the 3 packages you mention, but you
will need to create a small application for it, if you want to do it that
many times a day. It is highly unlikely it is available out-of-the-box (no
matter how simple you think it is).

Regards
Uffe Kousgaard

WinTopo Pro is an impressive program that may work. The freeware can't do
the color thing but I think that the Pro can.

http://wintopo.com/

As was pointed out, any of these packages can do what you want. Manifold
is by far the cheapest, though the way it handles colors for multiple
objects in the same drawing layer is a bit harder to automate. Still,
it would be easy to script up what you are doing once you get familiar
with the object model.

--
\ carpe cavy!
seagull @ aracnet.com \
http://www.aracnet.com/~seagull/ \ (seize the guinea pig!)

I use the three applications you mention. ESRI at work;
Manifold and GM on home computer. Using Manifold or ArcMap,
you could write a script to do this kind of task.

Best,
Dan