In this appendix I intend to explain the major news of LanDTM, dated in 25 of March, 2010, which influences what we have studied in the manual. Just some options have been improved and have been implemented, those considered to be necessary.

In the beginning, the menu, from where all the module options of "Geographic information" are accessed, has been changed. All new options have been included in it and the name of "Drawing patches" has been changed into "Draw General data" because now, with this option you can draw another series of cartographic elements, in addition to the patches.

In this appendix I intend to explain the major news of LanDTM, dated in 25 of March, 2010, which influences what we have studied in the manual. Just some options have been improved and have been implemented, those considered to be necessary.

In the beginning, the menu, from where all the module options of "Geographic information" are accessed, has been changed. All new options have been included in it and the name of "Drawing patches" has been changed into "Draw General data "because now, with this option you can draw another series of cartographic elements, in addition to the patches.

The manual is still fully valid and after having read it and understood it, this Appendix must be read to see which are the changes and the improvements. In principle, the changes refer to the way in which you select the area to import or draw its data and also to the configuration of the patches to draw, which now are no longer the patches that are drawn, but a number of other things as meridians, parallels, 3D solids and 3D faces of the earth, etc. can also be drawn.

When we studied the dialog boxes for "Digital terrain models import" and "Draw patches" (which now are called "Draw general data"), we saw that there was a button "World", with which it was possible to decide visually the latitude and longitude you want, but this had to be done manually and it was very difficult as you had to look at the meridian and parallel and to write them down, after.

What has been done in this update is to prepare a good dialog box for the selection of the area to be imported or to draw its data, with more intuitive graphics of all the areas of the earth, in a manner very easy to use and understand.

With this option, you can select the area you want, the size you want on the map of the earth. You have also the possibility to make up to 3 full zooms of the area you want, in order to be able to choose smaller areas.

With the right mouse button you make zoom, which is in the loop, so if you click the right button once you're in the biggest zoom, return to the smallest zoom or is the whole earth.

In the edit box, where it is written "Box", you can put the size of the square you wish to import or draw the data, in degrees, (As elsewhere, the grades are put in degrees, minutes and seconds, separated by space (12 23 34.453) or directly in decimal degrees (12.8737387)). And besides, you will see a blue screen traveling, indicating of the actual position of the box to choose.

You'll also see how the values of latitude and longitude coordinates move as you move the cursor around the screen, so that at any moment, you know in what position you are in the world. (including the value of the corresponding UTM zone).

You have two edit boxes of Latitude and Longitude, where the central value is written in the chosen box. You can also write by hand. When you press the right button, these two boxes will be updated with the value of the latitude and longitude of the selection box center. (Always and when it is selected the value of "Mark point and zoom" in the selection buttons).

And finally, there is also the possibility to configure the right button to make your displacement or "Pan", to the nearest point clicked in the current map or that the right button to update the latitude and longitude of the selection box center. This can be done by activating or deactivating the buttons for "Moving and zoom" and "Mark point and zoom." Simply set the right button to do one thing or another.

In this update, the program has been prepared to be able to draw all the elements existing in the digital terrain model on the desired UTM ellipsoid (in our case, we admit two: Hayford ellipsoid or ED50 and WGS84 ellipsoid).

As we know well, the coordinates in CAD, with XYZ referring to a UTM Zone, the first step is to tell to the program somewhere, which is the ellipsoid where we want to draw the data and to what the UTM Zone the coordinates we have correspond. This is the option "Configure projection data" from the menu of "Geographic information."

We have to take into consideration that, when the program imports the data of SRTM files or draws the projection, it automatically changes these data that are selected for import from files.

In any case and in order to be comfortable for the user, it has been included the possibility to access the selection box "Configure the projection data" always when you are going to draw the points, DTM lines, breaklines, etc. and when the box "Drawing data on the ellipsoid" is marked.

Thus, always when you intent to draw the data on the ellipsoid, you must configure these data to go in the right position. In the next image you see North America, Central and South America on the ellipsoid.

If you want to see the whole world, you have to insert "-180º" as Minimum Longitude, "180º" as Maximum Longitude and "-90º" as Minimum Latitude and "90º" as Maximum Latitude and with these values you obtain the entire Earth.

One of the most useful things in this new update is that now we can draw the meridians and parallels, both in XYZ UTM like on the ellipsoid, with which we will have now the reference of the exact position of each of the drawn entities.

In the dialog box "Draw general data" , (called previously "Draw patches"), by clicking on the configure button, we see that the configuration divides in three tabs, as we want to configure the patches, the meridians and parallels or the solids and 3D faces.

I will not explain in details each of the boxes, but only the most significant. As you can see, you can draw the text of the UTM Zone corresponding to each value of longitude.

It is very important to select well the separation between meridians and parallels, because if you draw an area of 1 degree, no more, there is no use to put the separation between meridians and parallels greater than that degree. So take a good look at these variables. The values in these boxes, as in all which request angles, can be inserted in degrees, minutes and seconds, separated by space (e.g., 0 10, this would be 10 minutes) or decimal 1.01892.

What is going to be drawn, are polylines representing the meridiana and parallels, so you can choose the separation between each of the vertices of the polyline, so that to be more or less around the meridian or parallel.

It is possible to put the text which marks the parallels and/or the meridians and / or UTM Zone in the ends of the selected area or certain parallels and meridians that are included here, separated by a space.

Finally, and most important, is to specify the value of the variable "The texts of the angles which will be drawn in" and to give you the options of "Degrees ", " Minutes "or" Seconds". This variable, in addition to draw the text of the degrees, minutes or seconds, as chosen, will also determine the initial value in which the drawing process will begin, when you select an area in the CAD.

Beware of the text size, since it is often forgotten to modify it and you have to tweak it a bit, because it depends on the size of the area which is drawn.

We can see an example of meridians and parallels drawing, on the ellipsoid and on an UTM plan, in the following images:

As with the patches and the meridians and parallels, 3D faces or solids data of the projected cartography can be drawn. And what is this for? Well, just to be able to associate a material to such 3D faces and painted in the color of the sea, knowing that when you are viewing the ellipsoid, the world is not transparent, allowing the visualization of the Earth clearer.

In order to be able to draw these data, you have to press the button "Configure" in the dialog box that appears when using the option "Draw general data" from the "geographic information" menu.

If you enable the option "Draw 3D faces", you have to select, in degrees, the size of the 3D faces that will be generated. It's important to select a colour, to the layer, for the rendering is good.

In fact, instead of rendering, we can use the option "Visual styles" within AutoCAD, with which we can configure the display/view, so that the faces and edges can be seen filled. Thus, we must remove the CAD toolbar, which is called "Visual styles", and use the option "Manage visual styles" to access the properties of the display.

In the properties window which appears, it is necessary to switch to "Hidden 3D" and put the "Face Style" to "Real" and the "Edge mode" to "None" in order to get the result you see in the following image. (Click on photo to enlarge).

It has created a tool, more than useful, in order to orient and scale images from any source, within the CAD. To do so, we must know two points in CAD and their corresponding image, either in XYZ coordinates or geographical coordinates latitude and longitude.

As it can be seen in the above image, we can insert the data manually or to click on a point in CAD, with which we can orientate the image, either of them being very easy.

It is preferable to select the real points in CAD, first, and then select those of the image, because the program will give you indications on the point you select.

The great advantage of this tool is the possibility to insert the data in geographical coordinates, so that you do not need to transform any XYZ coordinate to this reference system.

Take a picture of Google Earth, (if we took from Google maps, the image would be of a small area and the curvature of the earth will not be represented, because the projection that uses Google maps is different from UTM WGS84, while Google Earth uses this reference system to represent the land). The camera should be put as vertical as possible over the center of the peninsula, to prevent the distortion and "View / Grid should be enabled, in order to draw the meridians and parallels, which will serve us later. And finally, we captured the image of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, in jpg for example, as shown in the image below, with any capturer existing on the market. (Click to enlarge)

Now we open the CAD, and with "Import Data" tools we select the area of the Iberian Peninsula.

and we shall import all the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, putting a 30-step, so that we import 360 000 points, more or less.

(For this purpose we need to have ".hgt", SRTM3 files, as they are about 200). And after that, we shall draw the data "Drawing general data", of the meridians and parallels, with a separation of one degree, as we see in this Google Earth image. (The text with a size of 10,000 meters is enough).

We shall obtain the Peninsula and Baleares and the meridians and parallels, with a separation of one degree. Now, we select the option "Reference raster image, in "Insert" menu of AutoCAD.

We select the image, in "jpg" format, captured from Google Earth and put it near the place where the AutoCAD drawing is.

Now, we choose the values corresponding to the real world, in CAD, for latitude and longitude for the first and the second point, on 40 ° latitude for both points, and -9 ° of longitude to the first point and 2 ° longitude for the second point. This we can do manually if we know them or by clicking in CAD, selecting the intersection of the meridians and corresponding parallels. (The program will recognize as latitude and longitude any value below and above 180 º -180 º)

Once done, we press the button "Click" to the first point in the image, and the program will signalize us the point we have to look. Now, we click the second point, and with this one we have two points in the image corresponding to the points in the "real world", CAD.

Now, we press the button "georeferencing" and the program asks us to click the image we wish to move and rotate. We click on it and automatically it reorients itself, moves and scale to the real position.

It is, more or less perfect, because the area we have chosen is too large, and if we like it or not, Google Earth has an inclination of the camera which is inevitable, so it must be georeferenced, till we know it is right oriented. Normally we talk about very small areas, where aerial photography or image are well orientated and those are the cases where we implement this system.

Besides the option of "Georeferencing image" there is another option, just below, called "Move geographical image," meaning exactly moving an image which you have in CAD and putting the coordinates of displacement, geographical coordinates. This option was created because very often the image we receive and its position, instead of being in XYZ, is in geographical coordinates. (Obviously, you have to put the UTM Zone and the reference ellipsoid correctly). You have only a translation and not a twist.

A series of options have been created to be able to export points, DTM lines and contours in Google maps and Google Earth KML/KMZ format files. These files can be put over Google images. Their value may range from visual to the representation of a project performed by us in real photographs of the terrain.

If we want to export points to "KML/KMZ", we need to have an active DTM file, we just have to go to the new option "GIS \ Export to Google KMZ file \ Points" and the following dialog box will open to configure the file.

As we know, in Google Earth, the points are represented by what is called "Placemark", which can take very different forms and ways, and we can search on the Internet, choosing the most appropriate marks / icons to what we want to represent. By default, LanDTM put a round mark with a dot in the center, located on the route shown in the dialog box. These marks are Google standard ones, on your server.

It can be noticed that there are two "urls" where the files of the selected icons can be found, because one of them is for the case when the mouse is on it and the other is for when the mouse is over it, what we call "no touch" and "touch", respectively.

The color can be enabled or not. In case it is disabled, the marks will take the color that comes by default in the drawing, (but in that case you can not put opacity or transparency to the icons). If you enable the color, then we can put opacity to the icons, with which they will not be as visible on Google Earth.

The scale also makes the icon more visual and if you put a smaller "no touch" and larger "touch" then you will see how the icon is enlarged when you pass the mouse over it, giving a dynamic feel.

Enabling the box for "Put description", the XYZ coordinates of each of the points will be inserted and when you click on the box, the typical Google window will appear with this data. (Please note that the bigger the file is the slower the action will be).

All that we export we can be translated in XY and Z, which can be useful at certain times. I always put Z of about 10 meters, because the taken data is different.

The idea is to play with all the options and go to see the result in Google Earth in order to know what each of the options is for.

If we wish to export the triangles existent in the active DTM file to "KML / KMZ", we have just to go to the new "GIS \ Export to KMZ file Google \ Triangles" and the following dialog box will appear to be configured.

Each of the triangles to be draw, having a border and filling, which color you can configure. If you set the opacity to 255 it means that is not transparent at all and you will not see the terrain.

As a general description of triangulation, the value of the surface is put, much reduced as "geometry" (warped). This may be useful. The corresponding area is calculated for the description of each independent triangle.

If we want to export the existent contours in the active DTM file to "KML/KMZ", we have just to go to the new "GIS \ Export to KMZ file Google \ Contours" and the following dialog box will appear to be configured.

Two colors have to be selected for the contours: one for the main/directory contours and the other for the "normal" ones in order to make the difference between them.

As a general description of the contours, the total number of them should be inserted, and the values of the increments in XYZ.