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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
Following on from the success of the annotation tools in Digimap Roam, we have now added them to Geology Roam. The tools are the same as the one in Digimap Roam at the moment but we hope to add in a set of geology specific symbols and features in the near future.
We’d like to know what sort of annotations you’d like to put on the geology maps; perhaps a dip and strike symbol you can rotate and add a dip value to, or a borehole symbol that you can label with a depth and ID number. Please comment on this article if you have any ideas or send us an email:
You can now download high quality PDF maps from Ancient Roam for printing. This element of the service has been quite tricky to implement, so until now we have only had the save image button to get a PNG image of the map you are viewing.
Now you can use the print button to access a similar interface to the ones found in all the other Roam services. You can see a sample PDF by clicking on the thumbnail below:
A Sample PDF from Ancient Roam.
There are still a couple of options to add into Ancient Roam print maps; we need to add the ability to print 2up maps and the ability to switch off counties in areas where there are overlapping maps. Look out for these arriving in the near future.
Information about how to use all the features of Ancient Roam can be found on the following help page:
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:
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:
We have had another very busy month and so a new batch of improvements for the Digimap services will be coming soon.
Printing in Ancient Roam
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.
A sample image of what a PDF from Ancient Roam may look like.
New Data in Digimap Roam
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:
Vectormap Local- StandardVectormap Local - StreetviewVectormap Local - PlanVectormap Local - 1:10,000 Raster
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.
MasterMap - Line Drawing
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
There is more information about the map labels in the printing section of the Geology roam help:
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:
