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
//The VectorMap Local (VML) maps mentioned in the previous blog posts are now working in Digimap Roam. There is a video on YouTube showing you how to view all the different mapping styles that are now available at the four most zoomed in levels; including all the VML maps and Land-Line style MasterMap:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wadgUWe3jNA[/youtube]
For more informations see the previous blog post here:
More Improvements Coming Soon, June 20th 2011
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Some of the features mentioned in the previous blog post will be added into the services tomorrow, Tuesday 28th June:
Due to this work there will be some short Disruptions to all the services between 17:30 and 18:30. We hope you find the new features useful, please let us know if you have any feedback:
or call us on: 0131 650 3302
//We have had another very busy month and so a new batch of improvements for the Digimap services will be coming soon.
At the moment downloading data or saving screen images are the only ways to use the maps available in Historic Digimap once you have logged out. Soon you will be able to create and save high quality PDF maps from Ancient Roam for use offline. We hope you will find this a much better way to get the best quality mapping out of the service.
Since the arrival of the Ordnance Survey’s latest large scale product, VectorMap Local, we have been busy thinking of the best way to include it in the Digimap Roam. We have decided to use it to create four new representations available at two different scale levels.
Here is a quick look at what the four different representations might look like:
We haven’t stopped there either; we are also going to add in Line Drawing style mapping to the two most zoomed in levels; for those who like their MasterMap plain and simple, similar to planning application maps.
You will be able to select the different views from the Map Content Control Tab using a drop down list.
For more information about VectorMap Local look in the Digimap help pages as it is already available for download:
OS Products: OS VectorMap Local
For those of you who have tried the annotation tools in Digimap Roam it will come as no surprise that we are very pleased to announce that we are now working on adding the same functionality in Geology Roam. Again the annotation tools are a first draft and will have exactly the same functionality as Digimap Roam’s tools.
Once they are released we’d really like to hear from you about which functions you use and what else you would like added. We are already hoping to add in some Geology Mapping symbols for you to add to the maps.
As an added bonus we are also putting in the measurement tools so you can measure areas and distances too, so you can tell how long a fault is or what area is covered by different rock types.
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All our YouTube videos are now available under the Creative Commons licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and create derivative works from them if you give us credit. The videos are now available in the YouTube video editor so you can use them to help other users or show people what you have learned to do.
For information on what the Creative Commons licence means and how to edit the videos within YouTube go to this web page:
We’d really like to hear from you if you have been using our videos; please send us an email: edina@ed.ac.uk
If you have an idea for a video you’d like us to make you can join the discussion on our Facebook page: Facebook | YouTube Discussion
//The Digimap services will be no longer be ‘at risk’ on Thursday the 9th of June. The software updates are now being rescheduled for another date, we will inform you once we know when this will be.
Once again we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
//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?
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.
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.
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:
//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.
//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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
//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:
These 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:
//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 
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.
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.
