Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, available by subscription to UK Higher and Further Education establishments. Operated by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, Digimap offers a number of data collections, including Ordnance Survey, historical, geological, aerial photography, LiDAR, marine maps, land cover mapping, global mapping and census data. For more information about Digimap go to our website: https://digimap.edina.ac.uk Background image Contains OS data (c) Crown Copyright and database right 2022
//Update 12/02/2015: The contents of this blog post have been moved to the Digimap Help system and can be found at the following location (link opens in a new window):
For an overview of Building Height Attribute please see the following page (link opens in a new window):
http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/webhelp/digimapgis/index.htm#bha/bha.htm
//Update 12/02/2015: The contents of this blog post have been moved to the Digimap Help system and can be found at the following location (link opens in a new window):
For an overview of Building Height Attribute please see the following page (link opens in a new window):
http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/webhelp/digimapgis/index.htm#bha/bha.htm
//To get the most from OS MasterMap data it is usually best to convert it from its supplied format, GML, to a format better suited to the software you are going to use it in. For our CAD users Digimap has been offering the DWG format for several months (see previous blog post); now we are offering a format that makes the data easier to use in GIS software.
Although Shapefile is still the most commonly requested GIS format it cannot handle the large file sizes (over 2GB) that could be requested from the Data Download service; an area of 100km2 in an urban centre would exceed this limit. We therefore turned to the File Geodatabase format that works in the two most commonly used GIS software applications, ArcGIS and QGIS. There is more information about Geodatabases on Wikipedia here: Wikipedia -ArcGIS Geodatabase
To select the File Geodatabase format, add some MasterMap to your basket in Data Download. Once in the basket you can click the down arrow in the Format column and change it from the default GML to File Geodatabase:
Geodatabase formats are the recommended formats for use in ArcGIS software, being the most efficient for data storage and analysis. The format supports the use of .lyr files for styling the data and EDINA has provided some for the MasterMap data downloaded from Digimap.
The data can be added to a map in ArcGIS and QGIS in the usual way, though in QGIS you need to use Add vector layer –> Directory rather than a Database as you may assume.
Styling information for both ArcGIS and QGIS has been provided by EDINA in .lyr and QML formats, these can be found at the bottom of Digimap’s help page for OS MasterMap. These representations give enough information to view the data in a style that OS MasterMap is commonly viewed in. The help page also contains a link to the official Ordnance Survey SLD styling information, please see the PDF that comes with the SLD files for information on how to use them.
There are help pages for adding styling information here:
If you require any help on using File Geodatabases from Digimap or any other dataset or format then please get in touch:
//Update 12/02/2015: The contents of this blog post have been moved to the Digimap Help system and can be found at the following location (link opens in a new window):
For an overview of Building Height Attribute please see the following page (link opens in a new window):
http://digimap.edina.ac.uk/webhelp/digimapgis/index.htm#bha/bha.htm
//Even though we update our mapping data throughout the year we still make a large number of changes over the summer.
Along with the general updates to MasterMap and a few other products the biggest change over the summer has been to swap the 1:10 000 Scale Raster maps to VectorMap Local Raster maps in Digimap Roam. Ordnance Survey have retired the 1:10 000 data, so we have removed it from the online maps, though you do still have a couple of options if you are a fan of the product:
The table below details all of the latest changes we have made showing the currency dates of all Ordnance Survey datasets in Digimap.
| Ordnance Survey product | Data Currency | Last updated in Roam |
|---|---|---|
| OS MasterMap® Topography Layer | May 2014 | July 2014 |
| OS VectorMap® Local | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| OS VectorMap® Local Raster | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| 1:25 000 Scale Colour Raster | March 2014 | March 2014 |
| 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2014 | July 2014 |
| Meridian™ 2 | January 2014 | March 2014 |
| OS Terrain™ 50 | July 2013 | October 2013 |
| OS VectorMap® District Raster | September 2014 | September 2014 |
| Strategi® | January 2014 | March 2014 |
| 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2014 | September 2014 |
| MiniScale® | January 2014 | February 2014 |
| Ordnance Survey product | Data Currency | Last updated in Data Download |
|---|---|---|
| OS MasterMap® Integrated Transport Network™ (ITN) Layer |
May 2014 | September 2014 |
| OS MasterMap® Topography Layer | May 2013 | September 2014 |
| OS MasterMap® Topography Layer Raster | June 2013 | October 2013 |
| Backdrop Mapping | ||
| * 1:10 000 Scale Raster | June 2013 | October 2013 |
| OS Street View® | April 2014 | April 2014 |
| 1:25 000 Scale Colour Raster | March 2014 | March 2014 |
| OS VectorMap® Local Raster | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| OS VectorMap® District Raster | September 2014 | September 2014 |
| 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2014 | July 2014 |
| 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2014 | June 2014 |
| MiniScale® | January 2014 | January 2014 |
| Land and Height Data | ||
| * Land-Form PROFILE® | November 2009 | September 2011 |
| * Land-Form PROFILE® DTM | November 2009 | September 2011 |
| OS Terrain™ 50 | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| OS Terrain™ 50 DTM | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| * Land-Form PANORAMA® | November 1993 | September 2011 |
| * Land-Form PANORAMA ® DTM | June 2006 | September 2011 |
| Vector Data | ||
| OS VectorMap® Local | July 2014 | September 2014 |
| OS VectorMap® District | September 2014 | September 2014 |
| Meridian™ 2 | January 2014 | February 2014 |
| Strategi® | January 2014 | February 2014 |
| Boundary and Location Data | ||
| Boundary-Line™ | May 2014 | May 2014 |
| Code-Point® | August 2014 | September 2014 |
| Code-Point® Open | August 2014 | September 2014 |
| Code-Point® with polygons | April 2014 | July 2014 |
| OS Locator™ | May 2014 | May 2014 |
| 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer | June 2014 | June 2014 |
* Land-Form PANORAMA®, PROFILE® and 1:10 000 Scale Raster products have been withdrawn by Ordnance Survey and are no longer updated.
Remember there have also been substantial changes made to the Geology and Marine data holdings in recent months:
Please also note that there are a lot more formats available than before so you may not have to convert the data after you have downloaded it:
It is now easier to see which formats are available for the data product you are downloading and change it if you need to, this blog post shows you how:
Please let us know if you have any questions about the new data or any other changes and additions to the Digimap service
//We have updated all the new style Download interfaces in Digimap to make it easier to change the options for the data you have selected. When you have added some data to your basket you can now see more clearly what can be changed; the version (date and style), the format and the layers.
Where these options are highlighted in blue with a ▼ next to them you can click them and get a drop down menu with the alternatives.
Make the changes you need, add a name, then click on the Request Download button to order your data.
We have also made a slight change to the Product Information pages for some of the data products too. Where the data is available on tiles you can now click a Show Grid button to see the tile outlines on the map. When you make a selection on the map you will get all the grid tiles that are partially or entirely within your orange selection area.
This feature is particularly useful for data products like the 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scale geology data and the Marine HydroView Charts, where the data isn’t a continuous coverage and your selected area may contain no tiles. When you click the Show Grid button it will also automatically open the menu from the right of the map which allows you to change the grid shown or switch it off.
Remember, you open the Product Information panels by clicking on the blue Info links in the list of data products to the left of the map.
Please let us know if you have any questions about these changes or anything else:
//Marine Digimap has updated datasets in its brand new Marine Download facility. The new interface provides a single place to get both Hydrospatial data and charts. The Hydrospatial data is now the newer Hydrospatial One dataset from SeaZone which also provides access to much higher resolution gridded bathymetry data, one arc second instead of six. The Charted Raster dataset has been replaced with Hydroview Charts; these are still the same scanned Admiralty Charts though they are much more recent and include some small scale charts covering whole oceans (still not for navigation though!).
Marine Download works in the same way as Data Download, Environment Download and Geology Download; you select your area, pick your products and download the data. The main difference is with datasets as these don’t all form continuous coverage of the UK Coastal waters. We have therefore included overlays that show where the tiles of each dataset can be found. These are very useful when choosing your data, just open the “Show Grid / Overlay” menu on the right of the map and pick the overlay for the data you are selecting.
Remember there can be a lot of overlap between the Hydroview Charts and also large areas with no data, you will get all the charts that present for the area and scale band that you choose. If there is no data for the area you have selected then you will not be able to add anything to the basket, if you try you will get an error message informing you of the products with no coverage.
For a full description on how to use the new interface, have a look at the help page: How to use Marine Download
The data in Marine Download is broken into three categories, Hydrospatial, Hydroview Charts and Bathymetry. In the Hydrospatial category the same themes as before can be found, the Hydroview Charts are broken up into categories depending on their scale including those extra charts with wider ocean or global extents.
The old interfaces for downloading data, Hydrospatial Download and Charted Raster Download, will be withdrawn in the coming weeks, if you have teaching materials that include them then please update these as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about the new download or the withdrawal of the old interfaces then please get in touch:
//Until now, Digimap has always used the 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer to provide search results when using the interface.
We have now added street names to the search results in Roam, so you can get more detailed results for your search locations. The locations of the streets come from the OS Locator™ gazetteer which we have been working to include since Ordnance Survey made it an OS OpenData™ product. When using the search interface you can now put in a street name and search for it, though we would recommend adding the name of the place the street is located in too, particularly if it is a relatively common street name. The best results in urban areas are still achieved by using postcodes as these can often resolve to a particular part of the street. However in rural areas where postcodes can be very large, street names can give you the best results.
The search takes all the terms you enter and adds weights to each one; if you enter a full postcode it will just use this to pinpoint your location. If you are not sure your postcode is completely accurate in can be better to leave it out if you have more reliable information. Any street numbers or house names are ignored by the search as these are not stored in the OS Locator or 1:50 000 Gazetteers. The remaining search terms are run against the two gazetteers to produce a list of potential matches.
Be careful when searching for road names that are also places; searching for London Road in Edinburgh will also find Edinburgh Road in London and other possibilities from each city. The weighting usually puts the best match at the top, though you may need to look a little further down the results list sometimes.
We will continue to work on the search abilities in Digimap to improve the results we return, please let us know if you have any questions:
//
Until now anyone wanting to use OS MasterMap® Topography data in CAD software would have to convert their data, often a lengthy and complicated process. Now you can simply download the OS MasterMap Topography Layer in DWG format directly from Data Download. The DWG data should open in most CAD software such as AutoCAD, Vectorworks and ArchiCAD.
We always knew it wasn’t that easy to convert OS MasterMap data for use in CAD, the conversion software has a lot of options and can confuse at the best of times. The conversion software also doesn’t work on Apple Mac computers which are a popular choice with CAD users. However, we redoubled our efforts to provide DWG format data when we heard that some of our users were making PDF maps of OS MasterMap data and then manually digitising them from the screen… something had to be done!
Incorporating a conversion process into Data Download has not been simple and can produce some very large file sizes, especially if you need data for a busy urban area. Please only take enough OS MasterMap as necessary, or your computer may run out of memory when you work with the data.
To get your data in DWG format simply follow the usual steps for making an order in Data Download:
Once you have added your OS MasterMap Topography data to the basket, use the drop down arrow in the Format column.
Select DWG format from the available formats.
You can select one of two themes for your OS MasterMap topography data. Standard has full colour whereas Plan is in black and white with buildings outlined in red.
Note that you can also choose which layers of Os MasterMap data you wish to download – just select the Layers arrow and check the boxes next to the layers you need, e.g. Buildings, Rail, Roads etc.
Your OS MasterMap data will not need any conversion to open in most CAD software, enjoy playing with the vectors! Please let us know if you have any problems using this data or if you have suggestions as to how it could be improved.
//
You can now print a legend with your map in Digimap Roam, Geology Roam, Marine Roam and Environment Roam. The legend comes as a separate A4 PDF to your print map and is placed in a zip folder with the map for you to download.
When printing maps that have been customised by removing certain layers, those layers will not appear in the legend ensuring it is as concise and easy to use as possible. Geology Roam goes a step further as its legend filters out any entries for features that are not actually on the map you print.
Legends are particularly important for both the Geology and Environment Roams where abstract colours are used to denote the underlying rocks or land cover. When using the maps online you can use the map content tab or the map information tool to find out what features you are looking at. Now, with the addition of the printable legends, you can reference what these colours represent on the maps printed from the service too.
To add a legend to your print map simply check the box in the interface, as shown above.
In addition to the legend we have also added a Layout Preview tab to the print interface in all the Roams, including Ancient Roam. This tab allows you to see the full extent of the area you are about to print, very important if you change the scale or paper size. Any changes that will affect the area printed will trigger the tab to flash yellow, indicating that you will now get a different map. Even adding the grid to the map will slightly change the area printed as it requires a wider margin.
Once you have clicked on the tab you will see the precise area of map to be printed highlighted in orange. You can click and drag the map in this window around, refining the exact location to be printed. As you make changes to the paper size and scale you will see how these also change the area that will be printed.
The addition of this tab will make it much easier to get the right area printed the first time when used in conjunction with the content preview. Remember that the layout preview only shows the area you are printing over a backdrop map for guidance; to see the actual map information that will be printed you need to look at the content preview.
Once you are happy that you have the right map content for the right area click on the Generate Print File button, you will then be able to download the zip folder with your map and legend.
If you have any questions about these changes then please let us know:
