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May 16, 2012
Feature Blog - Order Data as DWG in WeoGeo
Posted by James Fee
Tags: Feature, Market, Library, Shopping, Order, Format, Transformation
WeoGeo has always supported multiple file formats. In fact, this is one of the largest differentiators between WeoGeo and other hosted GIS data solutions. We’ve always allowed you to convert between GIS formats, raster or vector. But we’ve now added Autodesk DWG format on selected vector listings to bring CAD users along for the ride.
When enabled, you can now order GIS data formats in native DWG format, which should speed up their use in engineering and civil projects. Most GIS companies expect you to use their software to convert GIS formats to CAD (and do it poorly). But we enable CAD support at no additional cost for Library users and as a data format in WeoGeo Market. Layers come along for the ride making it very easy to work with these datasets in your CAD applications. Give it a try today!
May 15, 2012
Data Blog - Federal Lands of the United States
Posted by Lindsay Mayer
Tags: Data Blog, Free Data, GIS Data, Federal Land, United States
Throughout the U.S., large tracts of land are owned or administered by U.S. Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Dept. of Defense, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Forest Service, and others. This map layer, prepared by the National Atlas of the U.S., shows these areas, and indicates the name and type of the property and its administering agency.
This data set has many potential applications, and it also shows some interesting national-scale patterns. For example, Federal lands clearly make up a much larger portion of most western states than most eastern ones, and I find the checkerboard pattern originating from the Railroad Land Grants (see Northern Nevada) especially intriguing. The data cover the conterminous U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Remember, the WeoGeo Market, allows you to visualize the data before downloading, clip your data to a desired extent, and download the data in a variety of formats including Esri Shapfile, MapInfo TAB, KML, GML, and EPS.
May 14, 2012
WetSaw for WeoGeo Tilepacks
Posted by Dan Dye
Tags: WetSaw, Tilepack, Preview Image, Python
I’ve recently showed how to use TileMill to create Tilepacks for WeoGeo Library and Market Listings. TileMill is a great tool and I love its Graphical User Interface (GUI) but I also want to demonstrate some Command Line Interface (CLI) approaches for the same process. CLI tools are important because we can script them. When you are making hundred or even thousands of Listings (like we regularly do here on WeoGeo’s Professional Services team), that scripting becomes very important.
Let’s take a look at the South America example that I’ve used in previous blog posts. Here you see the TileMill GUI preparing to export an MBTiles SQLite database with zoom levels 5-10.
Here is a CLI call to do the same thing:
python render.py -c 5 -z 6 -w -93.7793 -s 6.2279 -e -75.9375 -n 19.9733 .\mapnik_styles\southamerica.xmlNever heard of render.py? Allow me to introduce you! It is a part of a Python package that WeoGeo developed and that we’ve been using internally for quite some time. We’ve recently branded this package as WetSaw and shared it on GitHub. WetSaw wraps Mapnik and provides a bunch of options to facilitate efficient creation of WeoGeo Preview Images and WeoGeo Tilesets/Tilepacks.
To do generate the preview images and tilepack, simply add the –generate-tilepack option to the call:
python render.py -c 5 -z 6 --generate-tilepack=.\xyz -w -93.7793 -s 6.2279 -e -75.9375 -n 19.9733 .\mapnik_styles\southamerica.xmlThose options produced the tileset, bundled them into a xyz.tar.gz Tilepack file, exported the Basemage\Thumnail\KML PNG files (see below) and exported the job.txt metadata file, which describes the \boundaries\ required in the WeoGeo Utility (see below).
As you can see from the screenshots above, that single call to WetSaw creates everything that you need to create a pixel-perfect representation of your vector data in a WeoGeo Library/Market Listing. See why it is so popular internally at WeoGeo?
Stay tuned to the WeoGeo Blogs as I’ll be posting some more examples of WetSaw soon! And don’t forget to link to me! ;-)
Need help scripting the creation of your WeoGeo Library/Market Listings? Please contact our Professional Services Team.
May 09, 2012
Feature Blog - Save Orders Into Another WeoGeo Library
Posted by James Fee
Tags: Feature, Market, Library, Shopping, Order
One of the great new features of WeoGeo is that we allow ordering of datasets into your libraries. Rather than forcing you to download the dataset to your desktop, you can request the data get put in any WeoGeo Library you manage. Then you can work with that dataset on your own as you need it and you’ve got a great backup of data available anywhere. This works on data that is the WeoGeo Market or any datasets in private WeoGeo Libraries you can access.
To order into your WeoGeo Library, you must order the original dataset (it can’t be customized) and you must be an admin of at least one WeoGeo Library. Once the dataset is in your Library, you can customize to your hearts content.
If you buy data on WeoGeo Market, ordering into your Library is a great way to ensure that you’ll always be able to find that data. This is a very unique feature of the WeoGeo platform and one we know will be of great value to our users.
Sign up for your free WeoGeo Library today!
May 07, 2012
Create WeoGeo Tilepack from MBTiles SQLite database with mbutil
Posted by Dan Dye
Tags: MBTiles, TileMill, Tilepack, Python
The weogeo scheme in my fork of mbutil now creates WeoGeo’s Tilepack file (xyz.tar.gz file) for you. The Tilepack is a Tarred and Gzip compressed copy of the xyz directory, which contains the /z/y/x.png map tiles. (The structure and requirements of the Tilepack and the Preview Images are fully described in WeoGeo’s Developer Documentation.)
First, use TileMill to create your MBTiles file as normal and be sure to note the location that your *.mbtiles file was saved.
Next, execute my fork of mbutil with the --scheme=weogeo option:
The Tilepack file will be named xzy.tar.gz and will be saved to the same directory as the MBTiles file that you provided. The final step is to browse to that file within the WeoGeo Utility.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! And, as always, if this looks way too technical for you and/or you just want to hire someone to help you make your Tilepacks for your WeoGeo Listings, feel free to contact our Professional Services Team.