Google Earth and gINT....what can I actually do?

Hi everyone,

We've got gINT Pro. We're interested in using gINT to start a Google Earth file of all our borehole coordinates....EVER. Naturally, this should be easy because all the data already exists in a database, right?

Right?

We survey our boreholes in UTM north/eastings, so the first thing that needs to happen (I think?) is that we need to convert to lat/longitude for Google Earth to import properly. Am I reading it right that we need gINT Pro Plus to do this conversion? And that it will only convert from lat/longitude to UTM and not the other way around? Which is useless anyways? 

So assuming that I can somehow easily import existing north/easting data into GEarth, I was told once upon a time that it's not a good idea to use gINT to create a master kml file of all your boreholes, ever. Why not? We've done this with our projects (manually...groan) and there are certainly massive kml files out there. The Government of Ontario has a kml file showing all its borehole locations available online. So...can we still not go it from gINT?

Confused,

Mike

  • There were some posts on the old gINT forum (pre-Bently) regarding what you can do with gINT and Google Earth.  SInce those forums now redirect to this forum, maybe Pat can bring some of those old posts forward in some form.

    Wrt conversion of UTM coordinates to WGS 84 lat and long, It should be a relatively painless task.  I have done similar conversions by:

    1. going to the points table and selecting the the entire table and hitting copy.

    2. Paste the results into excel

    3. create a file from excel that can be read by whatever conversion software you want to use.  (I use CORPSCON...free!!).  

    4. run the file through the batch conversion software

    5. Take the output from your batch conversion and paste/import it back into the excel sheet (make sure the point id's match up).  

    6. copy the lat long columns from the excel sheet

    7. paste into your points table into the new fields you have created for Lat and long.

    As far as creating kml files from gINT,  gINT does create a fairly large KML file with lots of unnecessary entries(as opposed to other methods) but I wouldn't let that stand in my way.  I suppose for VERY large files Goggle Earth might slow down but you can always create several kml files for different areas/regions and just load the ones you need into Google Earth at any one time.  The largest KML file I created from gINT was for 600+ borings and that didn't have any problems but I do not have experience beyond that.

  • Mike, you are correct in that you will need gINT Pro Plus if you want to use the built-in functions to convert between Northings and Eastings and Latitudes and Longitudes. There are actually four functions, you can get Latitude and Longitude values from Northings and Eastings and you can get Northings and Eastings from Latitude and Longitude.

    And, yes, you will need your coordinates in Latitude and Longitude in order to display your boreholes on Google Earth.

    If you use the search capability here in the Be Community you will find some other postings/topics on Google Earth. I don't know if these are the same postings that Szang is referring to.

    I don't know what the file size limitations are for the kml files, but when you create a kml file from gINT it uses the project file that you currently have open and you don't have the option to append kml files when using the "View PointIDs from Google Earth" command in gINT. So, unless you have a single project file which contains all your gINT project data you will have to have separate kml files or you will have to manually combine them (which would be tedious and messy).

    gINT Pro Plus allows you to work with multiple gINT project files, so this might be another advantage in having gINT Pro Plus. I don't have gINT Pro Plus, so I cannot verify that this will allow you to access multiple gINT project files when you are creating a kml file from gINT.

    If you are going to get the Latitude and Longitude data by using a method such as Szang has used I would strongly recommend exporting to Excel from gINT and then importing from Excel back into gINT instead of cutting and pasting between Excel and gINT. If your Excel file has been created by first exporting from gINT it is easier to import from Excel directly than it is to cut and paste the data.

  • The posts I was talking about to provided detailed instructions on creating kml files from gINT that contained links to PDF files of the logs (also generated out of gINT) and some of the settings in Goggle earth necessary to make this work.  I sent an e-mail to Pat C. asking him to bring them forward into this forum.  It is very pertinent to what Mike is trying to do.

    Using cut and paste to move things back and forth from excel to gINT is quick and dirty (and I emphasis dirty since there is a high potential for data offset errors or unintentional overwrite).  I have also used export and import to accomplish the same coordinate conversion as Dave suggests.  With this you can use an export correspondence file to directly create the exact file format needed by your batch coordinate conversion software and you can create an import correspondence file that directly reads the output file from the batch converter.  This eliminates some of the manual manipulation steps.  If you are going to do a lot of these this is probably the way to go.  Do whatever you are most comfortable with.

    No need to combine the projects in gINT.  Just generate a kml file for each project and then merge them into one folder using Google earth.  To do this use the following procedure.

    1. Once you have your WGS84 lat and long and all the appropriate google earth settings done in gINT, create a kml file by selecting view boreholes in Google earth.  It will ask you for a file name to store the kml file and and folder name to name the folder.  Type in a unique short name that identifies the project for the folder name.

    2. Once Goggle Earth comes up and displays your borings select your temporary places folder and select Add, Folder from the Google Earth menu and create a new folder called "composite" or something.  See the picture below.

    3. Drag the folder created by gINT into this new composite folder.  See the picture above

    4. Highlight the composite folder and select File, Save, Save place as from the google earth menu.  Select the file type to save as kml and provide a file name. See picture below

    5. As you generate more project kml files in gINT, simply open the composite kml file after gINT displays the project kml and drag the project kml folder into the composite and resave.  When you are done you will have a single kml file that contains one composite folder and manysub-folders representing each project.  You can toggle on and off the display of individual borings, each project, or the entire folder in the left menu.  See picture above.

    6. If you have included links to PDF files of the boring logs as described in the old posts referenced above, clicking on a boring will pop up a balloon with the link.  Clicking on the link will retrieve and display the log. See picture below.  the only issue with this is that the PDF files need unique names so if you name each pdf file using the boring number you are likely to have many "B-1.pdf" files from the numerous projects.  Thus with the composite file you will need to come up with a unique file naming convention for your pdf files and links to avoid problems.

    Hope this gives you some ideas.

  • Szang,

    Good point about not needing to combine gINT project files in order to create a combined kml file. I have only needed to create kml files from one gINT project at a time and they were not related to each other so there was no need to combine.

    I think I recall the postings that you are referring to, they would be helpful. I believe the gINT Rule Add-In that I mention below covers some of the information that was in the old forum postings.

    Mike,

    The gINT Help file has a number of topics for using Google Earth from gINT. Enter "Google Earth" as the keyword when using the Index tab in the Help file. The "Google Earth Setup" topic has a lot of information.

    There is also a gINT Rule Add-In for creating kml files from gINT that provides a starting point for writing your own gINT Rule Add-In and it includes some camera icons and borehole icons to display on the Google Earth map. I strongly recommend checking out the example gINT Rule Add-In, even if you are not going to modify it to work with your own projects the example project helps illustrate what you can do with Google Earth and gINT.

    As a side note, if you are really ambitious you could create a gINT Rule that does the coordinate conversions.

  • Mind = blown. Thanks for all the input so far, everyone!

    1) I've found the gINT sample code and will play with it next week.

    2) a coordinate conversion gINT Rule?? I've found my Eleanor. Yes, that would do nicely....