Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Vicinity Map Source
I??ve struggled with this lately, trying about everything that has been mentioned on this thread in an attempt to become more efficient. I hate spending the time I do on a vicinity map. My next move is to research the availability of CAD files from DOT of roads by county. Xref label, done. At least that??s the theory.
If I’m working in one of the more remote areas or villages I’m not at all familiar with a vicinity map can be good to get a general area to begin my research. In the case of our larger towns, over my time here and with the use of GPS, all projects are now tied together so I’ve been creating base drawings of the whole area and add as new projects arise. I can then use this as a nice vicinity map. This is also beneficial in that I’ve drawn it once in CAD all the next person has to do is confirm what lines have or haven’t changed over the years.
Most towns near me have pretty good GIS data. Sometimes I need to supplement with Google Maps to get the names of rivers and ponds that somehow got omitted in the GIS.
I use the GIS to get adjoining property owner’s names and deed references anyway. Then I copy and paste from the screen to an image file, insert the image into the CAD program and trace it to get a vicinity map.
I am careful to state that the vicinity map is “not to scale” after having a spat with a lawyer who claimed my survey was wrong based on some assumption he made from one that I showed on a survey.
Historic Boundaries and Conservation EffortsI’ve always just took a screenshot of the local GIS and then traced over the parcel boundary and hatched it. I always scale mine to show a road or some other landmark. I’ve noticed plenty of guys don’t bother doing this which of course makes the vicinity map useless. If you’re going to do a crappy job on it, then yeah, don’t even bother, imo.
Has anyone contacted Google about this? Arguments about copyrighted images have been going on for a long time. It has been argued, that if just one pixel of an original image has been altered, than it is not the original image.
MH- Posted by: @field-dog
it is not the original image.
I don’t think that argument holds up. In literary material publishing somebody’s work with changed character names and a few different details or an occasional paraphrase is still plagiarism and copyright violation.
The test is whether it is still substantially the same.
. - Posted by: @field-dog
Has anyone contacted Google about this?
Their terms of service seem to put this on the fringe. They are mostly concerned with someone using large parts of their data to support a new service that in some way competes.
There is a requirement for attribution on permitted uses.
It is fairly common to find businesses using their maps on web sites to help customers find them. It isn’t clear to me if that is permitted or just not actively enforced.
They give some guidance on customizing images that would seem to indicate this might be fair use.
https://about.google/brand-resource-center/products-and-services/geo-guidelines/
https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/help/terms_maps/
. Well, google builds their GIS off of (among other things) our maps and I’m pretty sure we’re not seeing a dime from them so… maybe they’ve decided it’s wise to avoid biting the hand that feeds them. ???
What I end up doing is just taking a screen shot of google maps and pasting it into my drawing and then trace the roads. I don’t label every road just enough to get the general idea of the location. The only reason I draw them as we are required by the state to have one on our plats.
When all said and done, a good set of drawings will read like a story, hence the importance of a vicinity (locality) map.
Digitizing vicinity maps is what gave me the opportunity to get where I am today. Flashback to 1993, 17 year old Rodman at a decent sized local engineering and surveying firm. They would pay 2 hour show up time on rain days. Well instead of leaving I would ask if there was anything I could do to help out. It started with an engineer showing me how to run bluelines. At the time in a room without ventilation. Which I could only work in for about half hour. After few months of bluelines. One engineer showed me how to digitize vicinity maps from an ADC book to Autocad using a digitizer. And from then on that’s what I did for my show up time on rain days. Which was one of the main reasons my supervisor brought me in the office at 21 where I learned autocad, project management, and the business.
However, I do stipulate, I didn’t learn surveying until I left the big firm for the small family firm where I was fortunate enough to learn from a 2nd gen surveyor who taught me surveying. But I wouldn’t have got that job if I couldn’t run cad, calc, research, and everything else digitizing vicinity maps taught me.
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