Monday, June 14, 2010

Google Gadget for showing UTM Grid Zones of the world

The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system is a grid-based system for specifying locations on the earth's surface. UTM consists of 60 zones, each with its own local Transverse Mercator projection. This gadget will allow you to display UTM grid zones of the world with labels on Google Maps.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Creating buffers in Global Mapper




Buffer zones can be easily created in Global Mapper. The buffers can be merged and/or zoned depending on the parameters you choose during the creation.

The following steps can be used to create buffers using Global Mapper.
  1. Start up Global Mapper and open up a data file or create some line work to create buffers.

    The figure below shows two line geometries.

  2. Press ALT+D to activate the Digitizer Tool. Drag a box to select the geometries for buffering.

    The geometries are selected.


  3. Press a right click on the mouse.

    A pop up menu appears.

  4.  Choose Advanced Feature Creation Option | Create Buffers Around Selected Features.

    The Setup Buffer Area Creation dialog box appears.
  5. In the Number of Buffer Zones for Each Feature field, type in a value e.g. 1.
  6. In the Buffer Distance field, type in a value e.g. 100,
  7. Toggle on or off Combine Overlapping Buffer Areas.
  8. Click OK.

    The buffer(s) is created. By default the buffer(s) is created selected.
     
An example of a single, combined buffer is shown in the figure below.



An uncombined single buffers are shown in the figure below.

The figure below shows an example of combined buffers with multiple zones.