Hot answers tagged digitizing
13
Is it really necessary to oppose both solutions, and choose between them?
Some users feel better with paper, some others with a GIS. It depends on their skills, what they need to do, if they have a computer (with Internet), their mood, and certainly many other implicit factors we cannot guess.
My advice: try to convince that both solutions should be ...
12
I have been using a wacom tablet with ArcGIS for the past 5 years and have found it to be incredibly useful. I have only used the Intuous 3 (A4) but the ability to program the 8 shortcut keys as well as the trackpads has saved countless repetitive hand trips to the keyboard - and when you are capturing a lot of little areas of data this can be quite some ...
10
As other people have said, I don't think that you can rule out either case. I think that the solution depends on:
The users. Are they comfortable with the tech or not.
The Use case. Are they in the field in an area without network connectivity or not conducive to bringing expensive tech.
The solution/app are people still building ArcMap on a Web page ...
10
I would suggest talking to your local university or college. I work in a Geography department at a university in the geospatial data centre and we are doing a similar project with aerial photography for our local city. Universities can hire students, or make it apart of the class work. Many profs like the chance to tie their teaching to real world ...
9
I think the winner between on screen digitizing and sketching on a piece of paper depends a lot. It is possible to make a lot more precise and accurate digitizing on screen than on paper with the right background maps and the right tools. But I understand what you meen by saying that it tends to be more precise on paper.
To get the good accuracy on screen, ...
8
Check the CadTools plugin. It offers orthogonal line tools.
This screencast titled "Orthogonal Digitizing" should be of special interest for you: http://blip.tv/stefan-ziegler/orthogonal-digitizing-3049738
8
Tough one Chad. I suspect not as a first guess. The contours are quite 'light' and the graticule lines are very thick/heavy. You will likely end up with a poor set of results. However, I can run a quick trial for you and let you know!
EDIT:
Results of a trial:
Works better than I thought, and that was without much initial cleanup. Doing the "GIMP" step ...
7
You can use GDAL to read Geospatial PDFs (as of version 1.8.0). Even if you don't have the PDF georeferenced GDAL can read the image and transform it to whatever spatial system you need. Then you can read it into whatever GIS you need (as @Chethan S. suggests, Quantum is a good free one).
Choosing the coordinate system is a bit more difficult, and it's not ...
6
I use mine all the time with ArcGIS Desktop. The learning curve isn't as steep as you'd think. It becomes much more natural to draw on the canvas than trying to use a mouse. I've noticed that ArcGIS 10 seems designed for the Wacom tablets so it makes it very easy to work with.
My productivity goes up using the Wacom tablet, the quality of my work goes up ...
6
I am not sure if the impact on the environmnet would be less with using an online application. Based on my own experiance people will likely print out the digital version, draw their design on the paper then replicate it on the digital map.
How many users are we talking about? In our company of about 120, I usually send people a PDF map then let them use ...
5
Although i hate giving link-only answers your question literally calls for it.
If you have absolutely no idea how to start you should definitely read some tutorials first. The purpose of this site is to help you with GIS problems and not to teach you how to work with GIS-software! IMHO this requires to take ether a professional course or a lot of spare time ...
4
Inkscape will read PDFs as vector images and can save them as DXF which could then be georeferenced by OGR and converted to a more GIS-friendly format. You could the load that into QGIS to remove anything that isn't needed and apply any attributes you may want.
I admit it's a long-winded way of doing it, but chaining together tools like this can create a ...
4
You can chose between CAD Tools plugin which is more complex and more powerful,
or Rectangles ovals digitizing plugin.
***This is my add-on: after install the plugin you may have trouble to locate the plugin tool icon or buttons. Please look for the plugin tool icons on you Qgis software panel, they are probably in grey color. I attached the photo as ...
4
Maybe the answers to this question are helpful: How to simplify a routable network?
I used GRASS v.clean in the end.
4
If you are looking for a local solution, consider contacting architectural firms in your area. Very often these firms have (the increasingly rare) high quality, large format scanners needed to scan in your maps. Once the maps are digitized, you can georeference and mosaic them yourself or send the data off to be processed. I recommend looking into this ...
4
I agree with Alice and Stephen. If they will not share the data, then you are out of luck.
You could argue that if they had not disabled directory browsing of their REST endpoints, then whats to stop you from hitting the unsecure service endpoints with a query like this to pull back the points your after (also with the choice of asking for them to be ...
3
There are many options for you in ArcGIS, however I would stay open to open-source solutions too. You can purchase an extension for ArcGIS called Feature Analyst, which uses a feature extraction algorithm. Otherwise, try Iso Cluster Unsupervised Classification (Spatial Analyst) on 4-band DOQ's (Earth Explorer). Once you find the right recipe for ...
3
I don't know there is any way to automate such process by using ArcGIS. But I strongly recommend you to check out one software which name is eCognition developed by Trimble.
eCognition is based one the idea of object oriented classification; it builds up a picture iteratively, recognizing groups of pixels as objects. It uses the color, shape, texture and ...
3
We've used the Wacom Intuos 4 for a couple of digitizing jobs in the last year, and had a really positive experience. We've used it with both ArcGIS 9.3 and 10, no conflicts or other problems there. It took a day or so to really get into the swing of using it properly, but once past that learning curve, I'd say it improved our productivity significantly. ...
3
Yes, you can digitize in MapWindow using the Shapefile Editor, however you need to convert your pdf to a image file (tif, jpg, img...etc) then georeference it. Click here for the link for the georeferencing tool.
You could select the local UTM coordinate system.
3
We have several draftsman-turned-gis-techs who wanted this capability too, even after we showed them the various sketch tools in ArcMap. I created an Feature Dataset called Z_SKETCH and added a point and line featureclasss (Z_POINT, Z_LINE). The 'Z' doesn't have anything to with elevation, I just wanted it at the bottom of an A-Z sort.
This was a hurried ...
3
Your Draftsman could use the Direction Distance Tool, that you find "under" the Sketch Tool button. The symbol on the button is a circle with a crossing line.
To use the tool:
Set your Target to you Lighting Post and then:
Set snap (edge/vertex) to your curb layer (Editor button -> Snapping).
Choose the Direction Distance Tool.
Click the position on the ...
3
Some providers of imagery say you should not;
http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html
When the plugin is opened, it automatically sets the CRS to 900913 or 3785. That is good, don't change it.
Once the CRS is set, if you zoom in too much (say 2500 depending on where in the world you are) positional accuracy is broken.
3
There is a bug in the Openlayers plugin that affects only Google imagery in higher zoom levels. When reaching the highest zoom level available, the tiles are not enlarged or removed when zooming in further, but misaligned.
There is already a ticket for that:
http://hub.qgis.org/issues/6822
I did not exerience that behaviour when using bing imagery or OSM ...
3
While I agree that there are much better tools to accomplish this task, I'll give it a go just for the sake of answering the question, as cumbersome as it may be. It is still going to take a good deal of manual effort, but at least you can knock out multiple doorways at once this way.
Basically, you can create point features wherever your doors are, ...
2
In case the application end users would use is a map viewer inserted in a web browser (OpenLayers, ESRI Javascript API... even Flash based), I would give the following arguments:
Many people is already used to tools - or at least environments - like these (Google Maps, for instance).
End users do not have to install any new application: just a modern web ...
2
Maybe we need digitizing tutor websites analogous to the many typing tutor sites. Typing is also a hurdle for many in the general public.
2
You could use Adobe Illustrator to export the PDF file as an image. Refer File Formats of Illustrator. Then you can use Quantum GIS (which is free too) for digitizing. Google Maps/Bing Maps use the WGS-1984 Web Mercator Projection.
2
"Just wondering how well it plays with ArcGIS. What are your experiences? Is there a learning curve. Can the tablet and pen replace the mouse all together? "
I have used Wacom technology for over three years (IBM ThinkPad and also experimented with their interactive penable monitors). Most of my work is in Public Safety (Search and Rescue, Law Enforcement).
...
2
Our soil scientists like using it but when you have a really large datasets that can became an issue. We have a large dataset and they have to make line change with topology and it takes them forever for the topology to finish its work. Thank God I don’t have the Wamcom tablet. They just hating it now and wish they could have their workstation back. They are ...
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