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Grid Creation And Path/Polygon Measurements: Two New Online KML Tools



KML-GRID: Creates a point, line or filled polygon grid in KML. Set the desired parameters:

KMLGrid1

Clicking on “Data Fill Example” enters sample data into the boxes. For Grid Origin, it’s decimal latitude/longitude. For Increment/Decrement, it’s currently also decimal degrees, as the “Length Units” drop-down at top is currently limited to those units (wouldn’t surprise me if additional unit options were added soon). Click on “Create GRID”, and a view of the grid is shown in Google Maps (lines in this case):

10-24-2007-2.20.39 PM

Click on the “Download KML File” button, and the KML code will appear in your browser; either choose “Save As” from the File menu, or copy and paste it into a text editor and save it as a KML file there. Open it in Google Earth, and there’s your grid:

kmlgrid

A useful complement to GE-Path for creating KML grids.
KML – Area & Length: I’ve covered some other utilities that will calculate path lengths from KML code, filling in a gap in Google Earth. This new utility calculates not just path lengths, but areas as well. Paste the KML code into the text box:

kmllengtharea

For KML files that have both paths and polygons, you can calculate just the path lengths, just the areas, or both; set the units and the delimiters at top. When you click on “Process data”, you’ll get back a text window with the IDs and lengths/areas of the features in the KML file, separated on each line by the chosen delimiter. e.g. for the grid file above:

kmllengthresults


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2 Responses to “Grid Creation And Path/Polygon Measurements: Two New Online KML Tools”


  1. 1 Steve Lombardi

    on the subject of lengths and areas in KML – Live Search Maps will calculate and show this information when viewing a KML file. If your kml file is on the web you can view it like http://maps.live.com/?mapul=http://yourserver.com/yourgeodata.kml and if it is a local file you can import it by using the Collections -> Open my Collections menu. Hope that helps in some situations. we support a lot of KML in this manner – if you find a file we don’t handle, email me a link to it so we can investigate for a future release.

    regards,

    Steve lombadi
    Virtual Earth program manager
    stevelom a microsoft d com

  2. 2 ian

    Any way to put the grid on a bias as opposed to perpendicular with lattitude and lomgitude? As in it would look like a diamond instead of a box.

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