GIS info
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
Try http://www.esri.com/company/free.html They're the makers of Arcview and the .shp file format (there's a .pdf somewhere on their site that explains the format, which is fun because it contains both little and big endian data). "das leid schlaft in der maschine" -Einstürzende Neubauten
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
Yeah, I am into GIS. As a programmer your best start is www.freegis.org, for all the codes you will ever need! Links to many pages, which will lead you to many mailing lists-currently I am a member of at least 5 GIS mailing lists! If graphics skill is a concern, Feng Yuan's book, www.fengyuan.com, is a must have reference and tutorial on Win32. Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
There's a free library with source code for ESRI shape files. I've used it and it works. http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/shapelib/shapelib.html. There are lots of GIS data file formats. I suggest you learn a few things about their features before you start working.
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Yeah, I am into GIS. As a programmer your best start is www.freegis.org, for all the codes you will ever need! Links to many pages, which will lead you to many mailing lists-currently I am a member of at least 5 GIS mailing lists! If graphics skill is a concern, Feng Yuan's book, www.fengyuan.com, is a must have reference and tutorial on Win32. Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
Cool site, that'll help immensely. You're right, Feng Yuan know's a thing or two about graphics. He answered alot of my graphics questions on codeguru.com, back in the day. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
Depends so much on wot you want to do The stuff offered by ESRI and MapInfo is to my mind not that great especially given the prices they change! (I assume that the free stuff is even worse) If you need to worry about 3D (or even 2 and a half D) you will have problems If you want to do an even half serious GIS oriented graphics application, to my mind there are 2 opcions. 1) If you dont have any time at all AutoCAD C++/MFC/ObjectARX 2) if you hav a little more time and you want to do it propperly C++/(MFC)/OpenCascade In either case I reckon that wont get out of it in less than a couple of months of work, or 3 (MINIMUM, PANIC MODE) Ive been down both paths (with grey hairs, nervious ticks, and alcohol dependency to prove it). Cheers! David.Carkeet@manquehue.net Dave Carkeet.
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Depends so much on wot you want to do The stuff offered by ESRI and MapInfo is to my mind not that great especially given the prices they change! (I assume that the free stuff is even worse) If you need to worry about 3D (or even 2 and a half D) you will have problems If you want to do an even half serious GIS oriented graphics application, to my mind there are 2 opcions. 1) If you dont have any time at all AutoCAD C++/MFC/ObjectARX 2) if you hav a little more time and you want to do it propperly C++/(MFC)/OpenCascade In either case I reckon that wont get out of it in less than a couple of months of work, or 3 (MINIMUM, PANIC MODE) Ive been down both paths (with grey hairs, nervious ticks, and alcohol dependency to prove it). Cheers! David.Carkeet@manquehue.net Dave Carkeet.
Mainly what I want to do is keep my skills sharp while I'm looking for a new job. Been outta werk for a month and prospects aren't looking good in Northern New England I know MFC pretty well and a bit of OpenGL. I'm good with graphics data structures and objects of similar complexity but a bit lacking on database stuff. So to put it all together, I'll grab some GIS data, create and maintain a database of the data that I gather, and be able to view a 3D model of the terrain, and perhaps save it as a VRML file. I figure it'll be a good exercise. Maybe I'll write an article when I'm done. Just gotta get a grasp of GIS stuff first..... Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
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Depends so much on wot you want to do The stuff offered by ESRI and MapInfo is to my mind not that great especially given the prices they change! (I assume that the free stuff is even worse) If you need to worry about 3D (or even 2 and a half D) you will have problems If you want to do an even half serious GIS oriented graphics application, to my mind there are 2 opcions. 1) If you dont have any time at all AutoCAD C++/MFC/ObjectARX 2) if you hav a little more time and you want to do it propperly C++/(MFC)/OpenCascade In either case I reckon that wont get out of it in less than a couple of months of work, or 3 (MINIMUM, PANIC MODE) Ive been down both paths (with grey hairs, nervious ticks, and alcohol dependency to prove it). Cheers! David.Carkeet@manquehue.net Dave Carkeet.
Hi, I've seen that in your answer that your are talking about OpenCASCADE. I'm working with OpenCASCADE since 1995. If you really want to build a complex 3d software, I recommand to use it. With its ~10000 classes, you will be able to do what you want, keeping in mind your know-how and not the common parts (3d viewer, foundation classes ). BTW, I'm not affiliate woth the OpenCASCADE Cie ( but I worked for them ). And I'm working on an OpenSource 3d solid modeler with OpenCASCADE. If you want more infos about integrating GIS into OCC, you can mail me. Stephane stephane.routelous@sympatico.ca "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
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Hi, I've seen that in your answer that your are talking about OpenCASCADE. I'm working with OpenCASCADE since 1995. If you really want to build a complex 3d software, I recommand to use it. With its ~10000 classes, you will be able to do what you want, keeping in mind your know-how and not the common parts (3d viewer, foundation classes ). BTW, I'm not affiliate woth the OpenCASCADE Cie ( but I worked for them ). And I'm working on an OpenSource 3d solid modeler with OpenCASCADE. If you want more infos about integrating GIS into OCC, you can mail me. Stephane stephane.routelous@sympatico.ca "It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms eating pills while listening to monotonous electronic music."
Hi Stefane Ive seen your name in the Openascade community OpenCascade is easily, but, easily the beast free object oriented graphics environment available Im working now as an independant consultant and for my first project I took a chance with OpenCascade (I did a project with OjbectARX before when I was working in a company) The customer (a VERY BIG mining company in Chile), is very happy with the "look" of the product and Ive been able to deliver. This is my first project as an indepenedant and I didnt know anything about OpenCascade before I started. Dave Carkeet.
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Anybody know any good sources of GIS data, and perhaps information/documentation on the structure of the data? Gonna start working on my graphics skills. Figured I'd start by mapping the regional terrain. Any help is greatly appreaciated. Josh Knox Josh@that-guy.net
Here is one site : http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/ded.html The DED in the title refers to Digital Elevation Data. This page has a catalog of sources of data so you should be able to find some data of interest. I have done similar things in the past. Starting with some samples from here and codeguru, I made a little OpenGL program that displays .raw, .grd (from the surfit program), and .tga (POV-style) data files. I found a handy utility called dem2tga that converts .DEM files (used by the USGS and many others) into POV-style .tga files and this helped a lot.