Some Fun with the Annotation Tools

We have been having a play around with the new annotation tools in Digimap Roam here at EDINA, and have come up with a few things you might like to try.

Firstly, you will have no doubt been adding many new features to maps but have you tried taking some away?

A farm shown in Digimap Roam
© Crown copyright/database right 2010. Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service. FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY.

This is the original map area, a MasterMap map showing some large farm buildings to the left of the original farm house. If you had some information about how the area looked prior to their construction you could recreate a map form the past.

Farm replaced by grass.
© Crown copyright/database right 2010. Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service. FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY.

 

 

The map on the right shows the area after a large green polygon has been drawn over the building area.  Make sure you select an appropriate line width and style for the map, and remember to set the opacity to maximum. You needn’t stop there though, you could add buildings on top of the green polygon representing those that had existed previously.

 

You can also use the annotation tools for some other neat tricks.  The image below shows how you can trace around existing features, a car park in this case, and use the measurement tool to work out its area. By making the polygon fully transparent you can then print out your result without obscuring the original features.

Car park with an area measurement.
© Crown copyright/database right 2010. Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service. FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY.

Finally you can use multiple lines and polygons, annotated with text to build up complex new features on the map. The example below shows a proposed new airport in the Thames Estuary:

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Digimap services “at risk” on Thursday June 9th.

Service "At Risk".All Digimap services will be ‘at risk’ from 8:00 a.m. on Thursday the 9th of June. Our servers are undergoing some software updates so there will be some brief interruptions to the service while we switch over to our back up computers. Later in the day the will again be brief interruptions when we switch back to the main servers. If you find that your Digimap session is interrupted please wait for 15 minutes and then login again; though you may find access to certain facilities takes a little longer to be reinstated.

We apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

Geology Roam gets enhanced print maps and a new Active Legend.

We have been working on a few improvements to Geology Roam and have now added rock labels to print maps and a new beta active legend.

Print Labels

The print labels show the lexicon code for each of the rocks on the map, therefore allowing you to identify them on a paper map and distinguish rocks with similar colours. The codes are placed in the centre of the area of each rock, if the rock area lies at the edge of the map then they are place in the centre of the area shown.

The labels are added by checking the box on the Print Map page. Below is a sample of what the maps look like, click on the thumbnail to view a full size image:

Geology PDF showing labels

There is more information about the map labels in the printing section of the Geology roam help:

How to use Geology Roam: Printing

If you are using Safari use the following link and then use the index to get to the Printing section:

How to use Geology Roam

Active Legend Beta

The active legend allows you to reorder the entries in the legend alphabetically or by the number units of that rock type.  You can also click on the map to highlight rocks which will then be identified in the legend, this process works in reverse too, highlight rock on the map that have been selected in the legend. This functionality is still a beta version and we hope to extend the range of options available in the future. The image below shows the active legend at work, click on the thumbnail to view the full size image.

Active Legend in Geology Roam

Instructions on how to use the Active legend can be found in the Geology Digimap Help pages:

How to use Geology Roam: Active Legend

If you are using Safari use the following link and then use the index to get to the Active Legend section:

How to use Geology Roam

Annotation Tools now in Digimap Roam

The Annotation tools are now available to use in Digimap Roam.  We have a quick guide on what you can do with them on YouTube:

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSkTZvMNyKU&hd=1[/youtube]

We also have a section in the Digimap Help Pages that describes how each of the different tools works:

Annotation Tools Help

Annotations ToolbarThese annotation tools are a first phase, to see what you find the most useful. We would like to hear from you about any changes or additions you would like making to the tools. Please send feedback to our help desk:

Mailto: EDINA help desk

Changes and Additions to Digimap on Tuesday 17th May

Digimap will be ‘at risk’ between 17:30 and 18:30 on  May 17th to allow for some service changes and improvements to be made. Access to the service will have to be disrupted intermittently during this period as we add in some new features and make some software upgrades.  We apologise for any inconvenience caused and hope that you find the new additions useful.

Along with new features being added on the 17th of May all print requests from Digimap Roam and Geology Roam will have to be made using the print button  Print Button at the top right of the map. We will be removing the print tab from the list on the left of the map on June the 21st, but until then it will carry instructions on where to find the print button.

Print Tab

We are removing the tab to make room for the new features we are planning to add into the list on the left in the future.  You may have noticed that it is already getting a little crowded in Geology Roam, with Geology Photos and an Overview Map being added since the service was launched, and there are more additions on the way.

New Annotation Tools: Coming Soon

EDINA has been busy over these last few months creating some significant new features for Digimap Roam. To go along with the measurement tools we added at the beginning of April we are now working on some annotation tools.

Annotations ToolbarThese tools will allow you to draw symbols, lines and polygons on the map; add text, labels and area values; and set the colour and style of the features you have added. The features you add remain the same geographical size when zooming in and out and you can include them on your PDF print maps.

Annotations in use
Final version may differ from the image shown above.

You can download a sample PDF map here: Sample Annotations

We hope to have the annotation tools added soon, please keep checking the blog or the Digimap Facebook page for further announcements.

 

Digimap Training in Birmingham on the 19th May

training courseEDINA is running Digimap training at Birmingham City University on Thursday 19th May 2011. Training is free and available to support staff, teaching staff and site representatives. This course will cover an introduction to all Digimap’s collections, including mapping facilities and downloading data for Historic, Geology and Marine Digimap as well as the Ordnance Survey Collection.

For further information and to book online, visit the EDINA website here: Digimap Training, 19/05/11

Details of all our upcoming training events and webinars can now be found here in the Digimap Blog: Training Events

Digimap for Schools wins Gold Award

EDINA are delighted to announce that the new Digimap for Schools service has been awarded the GOLD Certificate for the best overall resource in the the Geographical Association’s 2011 Publishers’ Awards.

The GA Publishers’ Awards aim to recognise material which is likely to make a significant contribution to geography in primary schools, secondary schools or colleges, and to encourage the creative development of new materials. Further information about the awards can be found here: http://www.geography.org.uk/news/publishersawards/

OS MasterMap in Digimap for Schools
OS MasterMap available through Digimap for Schools

The Award was presented at the Geographical Association’s Annual Conference at the University of Surrey, Guildford on Thursday 14th April 2011 to EDINA’s Director Peter Burnhill and Ordnance Survey’s Director General and CEO, Vanessa Lawrence.

Peter Burnhill said, “This Gold Certification from the Geography Association Publishers is  splendid recognition for all those who have worked together on Digimap for Schools to bring Ordnance Survey mapping into the classroom.

“At EDINA, which is based at the University of Edinburgh, we aim to  live up to your expectations and do for primary and secondary schools  what we have done so successfully for universities and colleges,  encouraging love of maps as well as helping to prepare students for the future.”

About Digimap for Schools
Digimap for Schools is a joint venture between EDINA (University of Edinburgh), Ordnance Survey and JISC Collections and provides easy access to a wide range of current Ordnance Survey maps including national coverage of OS MasterMap, Landranger and Explorer series. Also included are street level maps showing street names and road-atlas style maps.

Subscribing schools can use a seamless digital map of Great Britain at each scale available. Maps can be printed as PDF files at A3 or A4 size and in landscape or portrait orientation. Maps can be printed with an individual’s own map title and name included with the scale bar and school name and address. Search tools include postcode, place name or national grid reference and maps can be moved to centre on any chosen location within Great Britain. Map keys are available for each scale map to explain the symbols used within the map.

For information about Digimap for Schools, how to subscribe and links to a free trial demonstration version of the service, please check the following links:

Data Updates: OS MasterMap and VectorMap District

OS MasterMap Data Update

The MasterMap data in Digimap’s MasterMap Download has undergone its April update; the new data has a currency date of January 12th 2011. The data is available to download for new orders, re-orders of previous data, and as a Change-only Update (CoU) which provides only the changes to the data since it was downloaded.

CoU and Re-orders can be accessed from the Your Account page in MasterMap Download; simply select the order you want to refresh and use the CoU or Re-order (current data) buttons below the order list.

Please note that the OS MasterMap raster data (Tiff files) in Digimap’s Data Download are only updated once a year in September. You can read about these maps in a previous blog post here: MasterMap Background Maps

VectorMap District Beta Release

VectorMap District data has now been updated from the alpha release to beta in Data Download. You can read about the differences in a previous blog post here: VectorMap District beta release

The currency dates for all the different data products in Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection can be found on the following help page: Dates of Updates to Digimap