First
A preliminary release to give you guys an idea. Has about 600+ placemarks and still needs a lot of work.
Have a look: Karachi.kmz
Have a look: Karachi.kmz
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December 30, 2005
December 29, 2005
Blue
I imported a few roads from the geodatabase to GE. Turns out, there's a slight problem with the georeferencing. Have a look:
I shall import the roads to the KML as soon as I fix this.
I shall import the roads to the KML as soon as I fix this.
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Excel
I have been collecting KMLs from throughout the Google Earth community BBS. I shall post a combined KML with atleast 500 placemarks shortly. There's a lot of inconsistency and uncategorization in them to clean up.
The cleaning up in GE is a headache as you can't even select multiple placemarks at a time. So I started opening up the KMLs as text in EditPad, stripping off the extra formatting, importing to Excel and doing mass editing there. Finally, it's just a copy-paste to a text file which I then save as a KML.
There are already lots of categories, like schools, hospitals, parks, dinning areas etc. But I shall be taking them further by adding descriptions, wiki links (if they exist), phone nos, web links, ATM networks, bank branches, etc.. Takes only an hour or so to customise the excel file and a few more to sort them out. So hold on to your mice till you see what's in store for the future.
The cleaning up in GE is a headache as you can't even select multiple placemarks at a time. So I started opening up the KMLs as text in EditPad, stripping off the extra formatting, importing to Excel and doing mass editing there. Finally, it's just a copy-paste to a text file which I then save as a KML.
There are already lots of categories, like schools, hospitals, parks, dinning areas etc. But I shall be taking them further by adding descriptions, wiki links (if they exist), phone nos, web links, ATM networks, bank branches, etc.. Takes only an hour or so to customise the excel file and a few more to sort them out. So hold on to your mice till you see what's in store for the future.
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December 28, 2005
Blink
It's great to be back again! Things got sort of rough with the last blog (at pnec.blogspot.com) and it had to go. This time, InshAllah, things shall go a lot smoother.
The GIS (Geographical Information Systems) industry grew in great proportions this year. The best thing to happen, by far, was obviously Google Earth. It brought GIS to the masses and, well, made my job so much easier. ;)
Back to business. Here are the goals I feel we need to be able to accomplish to some extent.
Goal 1 - Make a great map for Karachi. And I do mean a REALLY great map for Karachi. The current ones suck. We all know that. Most are made by hand, and local maps with hand calligraphy just plain... well, suck! Our map will be different. It can come out as a PDF for the PC, on paper for the road, as JPG for the geeks on the road, or on GPS for the uber geeks on the road, or as KMLs for those who just don't have anything better to do.
Goal 2 - Make sure the above works. Ok, just kidding! No... I don't mean that. Ofcourse, the map will work. What I'm trying to say is that it should be an 'intelligent' map that can tell you directions or give alternate routes... things like that. Now wouldn't that be cool?
But hang on. The former's easy. It's the latter that becomes difficult. It would require making a geographical database and creating geometrical networks in feature datasets and feature classes and tables and relationship classes with points, polygons, lines, and [put boring terminology summation here].
The latter also requires satellite photography which I am currently on to. I just finished caching the entire high-res area for Karachi in GE using a little bit of both 1st semester computers 101 and Microsoft Excel for dummies tricks. [Took me 10 weeks to tell myself that I had to do something about it, 10 minutes to figure it out and 1 minute to implement it... relativity isn't so bad after all.] I'll let the screenshot give you guys a hint.
My next goal now is to extract the sat. photos. Got a few DirectX tricks up my sleeve which I shall try in a day or two [unless a friend unknowingly entices me into buying that GeForce 5200 and playing HL2]. But that's all about goal no. 2.
Goal 1's all about data collection. And GE is the tool for the job. GE's free, and everyone's got it, and that should make it so much easier. But unfortunately, being free isn't really the best thing. Only GE Plus and Pro allow the creation of lines and polygons (read: roads and houses). Placemarks just don't have it in them. But since we don't have any choice, I guess we'll have to make do with them.
So here's the deal.
We'll now start on working on 1 KML. This will be THE Karachi KML. I mean, it's going to be more detailed than any other city KML you have seen before. For that to happen, everybody will need to pool in data. Since everybody can use GE, anybody can contribute.
If you're thinking about how that KML's going to be useful in creating maps in other formats, I'll reveal that soon. Meanwhile, give your comments on what you think about the project.
The GIS (Geographical Information Systems) industry grew in great proportions this year. The best thing to happen, by far, was obviously Google Earth. It brought GIS to the masses and, well, made my job so much easier. ;)
Back to business. Here are the goals I feel we need to be able to accomplish to some extent.
Goal 1 - Make a great map for Karachi. And I do mean a REALLY great map for Karachi. The current ones suck. We all know that. Most are made by hand, and local maps with hand calligraphy just plain... well, suck! Our map will be different. It can come out as a PDF for the PC, on paper for the road, as JPG for the geeks on the road, or on GPS for the uber geeks on the road, or as KMLs for those who just don't have anything better to do.
Goal 2 - Make sure the above works. Ok, just kidding! No... I don't mean that. Ofcourse, the map will work. What I'm trying to say is that it should be an 'intelligent' map that can tell you directions or give alternate routes... things like that. Now wouldn't that be cool?
But hang on. The former's easy. It's the latter that becomes difficult. It would require making a geographical database and creating geometrical networks in feature datasets and feature classes and tables and relationship classes with points, polygons, lines, and [put boring terminology summation here].
The latter also requires satellite photography which I am currently on to. I just finished caching the entire high-res area for Karachi in GE using a little bit of both 1st semester computers 101 and Microsoft Excel for dummies tricks. [Took me 10 weeks to tell myself that I had to do something about it, 10 minutes to figure it out and 1 minute to implement it... relativity isn't so bad after all.] I'll let the screenshot give you guys a hint.
My next goal now is to extract the sat. photos. Got a few DirectX tricks up my sleeve which I shall try in a day or two [unless a friend unknowingly entices me into buying that GeForce 5200 and playing HL2]. But that's all about goal no. 2.
Goal 1's all about data collection. And GE is the tool for the job. GE's free, and everyone's got it, and that should make it so much easier. But unfortunately, being free isn't really the best thing. Only GE Plus and Pro allow the creation of lines and polygons (read: roads and houses). Placemarks just don't have it in them. But since we don't have any choice, I guess we'll have to make do with them.
So here's the deal.
We'll now start on working on 1 KML. This will be THE Karachi KML. I mean, it's going to be more detailed than any other city KML you have seen before. For that to happen, everybody will need to pool in data. Since everybody can use GE, anybody can contribute.
If you're thinking about how that KML's going to be useful in creating maps in other formats, I'll reveal that soon. Meanwhile, give your comments on what you think about the project.
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