10 replies to this topic

[peanut]

This is my latest attempt at using Google Maps combined with tile caches from ArcGIS server to make an interactive web map. The site can be found at: http://maps.lcra.org/interactive.aspx.

Just figured I would throw it out here to see what ya'll think.

Rich

[sjonni11]

Gday Rich,

Really nice web map. Shows that ARCserver to google maps is the way to go. Well done mate.

Sigurjon Runarsson
Sydney, Australia

[natcase]

Nice speed and flexibility. Inherent problems with over/under layering (stream labels under county lines, for example), but of its kind quite elegant.

[Simon]

i think its really impressive - good work.

Ive just begun to get my feet wet with a new EDN license and ArcGIS Server.
Ive done a bit of google maps, mainly simple maps showing static gis layers from shapefiles, either as image overlays or getting data from MySQL databases.

Id like to link the two together and was wondering if you had some good links on tutorials/help on how to do this.

Thanks in advance...

[MapMedia]

Hey Rich,

Glad you are keeping this site up-to-date - its a great data interface - the making of a model map/data GUI for environmental programs maybe.
I really like the technical assembly as well as the map itself. Very intuitive, for me at least, and the PDF reports are easy to access.

Chris

[peanut]

i think its really impressive - good work.

Ive just begun to get my feet wet with a new EDN license and ArcGIS Server.
Ive done a bit of google maps, mainly simple maps showing static gis layers from shapefiles, either as image overlays or getting data from MySQL databases.

Id like to link the two together and was wondering if you had some good links on tutorials/help on how to do this.

Thanks in advance...

I use ArcGIS server to make tile caches and then move the images to a webserver and access the images via the Google Maps API and JavaScript. Currently the process is not very streamlined. The trick is to build your MXD using the same Mercator projection that Google uses and then setup up your ArcGIS server conf.xml file to export tiles at the various scales you are wanting to use in Google Maps. To make sure you get nice output from ArcGIS server you can set up your MXD using scale dependent renderers to turn on and off different data at different zoom levels.

The scales I use for Texas are:

1:9244705
1:4622352
1:2311176
1:1155588
1:577794
1:288897
1:144448
1:72224
1:36112

These scales should change as you move north and south so they will likely be different in your location.

The bad news about all this is I had a good deal of help working all of this out. More than I can explain here...

The good news is... In ArcGIS Server 9.3 ArcGIS server will export Google Tiles from the native application so the whole process should be streamlined.... and ArcGIS Server 9.3 should come out this week.

Hope this helps.

Rich

[greig]

This is a great application! It works really smoothly. I am curious if there is potential to do advanced queries and selection of features and geoprocessing requests from the Google Map? Do you know of any applications that currently do this?

Cheers

[peanut]

This is a great application! It works really smoothly. I am curious if there is potential to do advanced queries and selection of features and geoprocessing requests from the Google Map? Do you know of any applications that currently do this?

Cheers

Thanks for your comments!

I think that anything is possible as long as you can think it up. You can read though the reference materials and discussion forum over here to see what is possible.

The most robust application I have worked on that runs on top of the Google Maps API is this one:

http://hydromet.lcra.org

Rich

[razornole]

Hey Rich,

The map looks great, better then anything I could do online.

From a cartography standpoint, I think the large clustered symbols on the opening map scale are too distracting. I picked a random one to try and click on and ended up selecting the one next to it. I don't know if you can or want to do anything about that.

The one thing that drove me crazy is that I couldn't find out what LCRA stands for (i.e. what are you mapping). I even spent time surfing around the site and still couldn't find out what LCRA stood for.

kru

[Michael Schmeling]

The one thing that drove me crazy is that I couldn't find out what LCRA stands for (i.e. what are you mapping). I even spent time surfing around the site and still couldn't find out what LCRA stood for.

I think it's in the footer of the page: Lower Colorado River Authority?

[razornole]

Thanks Arid Ocean,

My point was that it wasn't obvious, although in this case I really didn't see it and assumed that it stood for Lower Colorado Recreation Area. Letting the people know what you are mapping is probably more important then the map itself. It should be obvious on that intro page and then it could disappear when one zooms in.

kru