I was talking to James about a project this morning and he asked if I knew where it was in the world. Apparently, “Um, Florida somewhere?” wasn’t good enough.
Let’s say I want to put a Google Earth image underlay in my drawing for reference. Or maybe I want an idea of what is surrounding my site. Or even just get driving directions.
Your drawing must be assigned a coordinate system and properly placed. This isn’t going to read your mind or magically line up based on you wishing hard enough. The idea here is that Google Earth will prevent you from having to manually pan around maps or GIS data, etc. to find your site.
Press Publish to Google Earth.
Work through the wizard. Take care to check the assigned coordinate system.
At the end of the wizard, be sure to press View.
Google Earth will open and fly you to your location. If it flies you far away from your location, you know that somebody screwed up. Either the wrong coordinate system was applied, or the entities were put in the wrong place. Breathe deeply. Resist the urge to run down to the survey department screaming. Chances are, it’s your fault. But we’ll deal with that later.
To turn off your drawing entities in Google Earth, look for the entry under Temporary Places that should match your drawing name.
Now you can import a Google Earth Image, Surface, Grid, etc. or get those driving directions you need to take the field crew lunch.
For more ideas on how to use Google Earth, check out their blog. http://www.gearthblog.com/
Tom Inzinga also did a really nice AU Class on publishing to Google Earth at AU 2009. Publishing DWG Data to Google Earth™
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