AÂ number of datasets available through the Ordnance Survey collection in Digimap have been updated over the summer as show in the tables below. OS Data Download: Product Name OSÂ Publication Date OS MasterMap Topography Layer June 2016 OS VectorMap Local Raster July 2016 OS Terrain 5 (DTM) July 2016 OS Terrain 5 (Contours) July 2016 OS […]
Author Archives: Ian Holmes
GoGeo Service to end on 31 July 2016
In case you haven’t seen the notice on our home page (www.gogeo.ac.uk) the GoGeo service, funded by Jisc, will end on 31 July 2016.
Digimap Dataset Updates: June 2016
A number of datasets have been updated in June 2016, all in the Digimap Ordnance Survey Collection. As well as updates to the 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 Colour Raster products (which are the digital versions of the ever popular Explorer and Landranger paper map series), this month we have also updated the relatively new OS Open Rivers dataset, an image of the full network is shown on the right hand side. This is the first update to the dataset which was first released in March 2015. Users should note that this dataset is still a Beta version, so changes to the specification and/or delivery method are still possible.
OS Data Download:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| OS MasterMap ITN Layer Urban Paths Theme | April 2016 |
| Code-Point | May 2016 |
| 1:250,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
| 1:25,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
| 1:50,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
| OS Open Rivers | June 2016 |
| * 1:50,000 Scale Gazetteer | May 2016 |
* Note: this is the last update to 1:50,000 Scale Gazetteer as Ordnance Survey have announced that they are retiring this product. Users are advised to use OS Open Names instead. Whilst the data will still be available to download through Digimap, this product will no longer be updated to reflect changes in the real world.
OS Roam:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| 1:250,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
| 1:25,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
| 1:50,000 Scale Colour Raster | June 2016 |
The data product updates help page is kept up to date with all dataset updates in the Ordnance Survey collection.
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Detailed contemporary mapping added to Ancient Roam
We have recently added detailed, large scale, contemporary mapping to Ancient Roam allowing users to compare side by side historic mapping with detailed modern mapping.
The detailed modern mapping is visible at all zoom levels in both the 1-up and 2-up views. The most detailed mapping uses the new OS OpenMap – Local product, which is the most detailed Open Data product available from Ordnance Survey and can be downloaded through the Digimap Ordnance Survey collection. We further enhanced the most detailed mapping to include the additional features from OS VectorMap District:
- Contours
- Spot heights
- Medical centres
- Police stations
- Heritage sites
- Places of worship
The other products we have added are OS StreetView and OS VectorMap District Raster to provide a comprehensive set of contemporary map data suitable for all zoom levels in Ancient Roam.
We hope you find the new data useful, if you have any questions about the updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Digimap Dataset Updates: May 2016
Latest version of OS VectorMap Local Raster
A number of datasets in the Ordnance Survey Collection have been updated in May this year. We’ve also made a number of improvements to some of the datasets that are popular for 3D modelling which will hopefully make it easier to use these datasets in CAD applications. The main changes are:
- OS MasterMap Sites Layer now available in DWG and ESRI Shapefile format (previously it was only available in GML)
- OS Terrain 5 DTM is now available in XYZ format for use in CAD applications
- OS Terrain 5 Contours in DWG format are now provided as as 3D contours with the height of each feature set to the correct contour height
The data format help page has been updated to reflect these changes and is a good place to go if you are interested to see which datasets are available in a specific format.
Digimap dataset updates: March and April 2016
Lots of datasets were updated in March and April this year, with the majority of updates being to data in the Ordnance Survey Collection of Digimap. We also updated the vector marine data in Marine Roam so that it is now displaying the same version that is available for download through Marine Download; the Borehole data in Geology Download has also been updated to the latest version.
The updates include the latest versions of the 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 Colour Raster products which show the new height of Ben Nevis. The mountain, which is the tallest in Britain, was recently resurveyed by OS and found to be one metre taller than the measurements taken during the previous survey in 1949. If you’re interested in finding out more about the resurvey, and why two different heights are shown for the summit on the maps, the Ordnance Survey have published a blog post which explains the process in detail.
The tables below detail all the datasets that were updated recently in each Collection along with the publication dates of each one.
OS Data Download:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| 1:25,000 Colour Raster | March 2016 |
| 1:50,000 Colour Raster | March 2016 |
| MasterMap Topography Layer | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local Raster | January 2016 |
| VectorMap District | March 2016 |
| VectorMap District Raster | March 2016 |
| Terrain 5 Contours | January 2016 |
| Terrain 5 DTM | January 2016 |
| Code-Point with Polygons | January 2016 and April 2016 |
| Code-Point | February 2016 |
| Code-Point Open | February 2016 |
| Points of Interest | March 2016 |
| Open Names | March 2016 |
| MiniScale | January 2016 |
| * OS Street View | April 2016 |
| * Meridian 2 | July 2015 and January 2016 |
| * Strategi | January 2016 |
OS Roam:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| 1:25,000 Colour Raster | March 2016 |
| 1:50,000 Colour Raster | March 2016 |
| MasterMap Topography Layer | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local Raster | January 2016 |
| VectorMap District Raster | March 2016 |
| Terrain 50 Contours | July 2015 |
| Â MiniScale | January 2016 |
| * Meridian 2 | January 2016 |
| * Strategi | January 2016 |
* Note: these are the last updates to OS Street View, Merdian 2 and Strategi that will be supplied by Ordnance Survey who have announced that they are retiring these products. Whilst the data will still be available to download through Digimap, these products will no longer be updated to reflect changes in the real world.
The data product updates help page is kept up to date with all dataset updates in the Ordnance Survey collection.
Marine Roam:
As well as all the changes in the Ordnance Survey collection, we have also updated the vector data in Marine Roam from Seazone Solutions. This brings the data up to date with the latest version of the product from SeaZone Solutions, which is also available for download through Marine Download.
| Product Name | SeaZone Publication Date |
| HydroSpatial One | August 2015 |
Geology Download:
Finally the Borehole data available in Geology Download has also been updated to the latest version available from the British Geological Survey.
| Product Name | BGSÂ Publication Date |
| Onshore Borehole Index | January 2016 |
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Improvements to Digimap February/March 2016
Last week (3rd March) we released a new version of Digimap which includes a number of changes that may be of interest to our growing user base. Our set-up allows us to release new versions without requiring any downtime so the recent changes are highlighted below as they may not be obvious at first glance.
Greyscale versions of the 1:25,000 Colour Raster and 1:50,000 Colour Raster have been added to OS Roam
We have added greyscale versions of the 1:25,000 Colour Raster and 1:50,000 Colour Raster products in the Roam client of the Ordnance Survey Collection. These can be selected using the Basemaps drop-down.
The new greyscale versions make it much easier to see your annotations on top of the basemap. The greyscale versions can be saved and printed like all other basemaps available in OS Roam.
Warning about losing changes in all Roam clients
If you customise a map in one of the Roam clients, for example by modifying the layers that are displayed or by creating annotations on the map, then press the browsers back button or navigate away from Roam you will now see a warning prompt advising you that you may lose your changes. The prompt that is displayed in Chrome is shown below:
The prompt is not displayed if you have saved the map, printed the map, or exported the annotations.
Updates to the Open/Save wording in all Roam clients
We have updated the text on the Open and Save menus in all Roam clients to make it clearer what each option does:
Open > Saved maps allows you to open any maps you have previously created and saved within Roam.
Open > Import annotations is where you go to import external datasets in to Roam (we currently support the import of datasets in Shapefile, KML, GPX, CSV, and GeoJSON formats).
Save > Save map will save the current map extents along with any annotations to Digimap for retrieval at a later date.
Save > Export annotations allows you to export annotations from Roam as an external dataset for use GIS/CAD (we currently support the export of datasets in Shapefile, KML, and GeoJSON formats).
Background mapping in Data Download of all Collections is now shown in greyscale
The background mapping data in all Data Download clients has been converted to greyscale:
This makes it much easier to see the availability and reference grids in these applications.
Further improvements
We hope you enjoy using these new features. We are continually improving the service so if you have any suggestions for improvements to the service please get in touch:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Digimap dataset updates: February 2016
Lots of datasets were updated in February this year in the Ordnance Survey Collection of Digimap. The tables below detail all the datasets that were updated last month along with the OS publication dates of each one.
OS Data Download:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| MasterMap Topography Layer | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local Raster | January 2016 |
| Terrain 5 Contours | January 2016 |
| Terrain 5 DTM | January 2016 |
| Code-Point with Polygons | January 2016 |
| Code-Point | February 2016 |
| Code-Point Open | February 2016 |
| MiniScale | January 2016 |
| * Meridian 2 | July 2015 and January 2016 |
| * Strategi | January 2016 |
OS Roam:
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| MasterMap Topography Layer | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local | January 2016 |
| VectorMap Local Raster | January 2016 |
| Terrain 50 Contours | July 2015 |
| Â MiniScale | January 2016 |
| * Meridian 2 | January 2016 |
| * Strategi | January 2016 |
* Note: the January 2016 updates to Strategi and Meridian 2 are the last that will be provided by OS. The datasets will still be available to download through Digimap but they will no longer be updated to reflect changes in the landscape. Alternative products, which are still maintained by OS, are available including VectorMap District, 1:250,000 Colour Raster and MiniScale.
The data product updates help page is kept up to date with all dataset updates in the Ordnance Survey collection.
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Recent improvements to Digimap
We released a new version of Digimap last week (2nd February) which included a number of improvements to the service. Whilst we try to minimise downtime during releases some users may have noticed some of the new features; in this post we’ll highlight the changes that affect Digimap users.
Chart Roam
By far the biggest change happened in the Marine Collection where the old, somewhat dated, Marine Maps application was replaced with the new Chart Roam application. Chart Roam uses the familiar Roam interface to display hydrographic charts, enabling users to quickly and easily navigate around using the tools they are familiar with from other Roam clients.
Chart Roam displays marine Hydrographic Charts from SeaZone Solutions using the WGS84 Web Mercator projection. As part of the work done to support the display of map data in different projections we added Nautical Miles to the distance measurement tool in Chart Roam. Users can now measure distances in metric (metres and kilometres), imperial (yards and miles) and nautical units; areas measurements can only be made in metric units at present.
Annotations [all Roam clients]
We have made significant improvements behind the scenes to the way annotations are handled in all Roam applications. This work was done to ensure that users uploading annotations with a large number features can style, save and print the data once loaded in to one of the Roam applications. Other notable improvements are detailed below:
- We have added the ability to load multiple Shapefiles as annotations from a single Zip archive. Previously it was only possible to import a single Shapefile from a Zip archive, and all other Shapefiles were ignored by the import process. Now all Shapefiles in your Zip archive will be added to the map, and they can be of different geometry types e.g. points, lines and polygons.
- We have improved the printing process so that it is possible to create prints that contain many more annotations.
- Improvements have been made to remove some of the internal file size and feature number limits when loading, saving and exporting larger annotations. Note there is a 10MB file size limit when importing annotations.
- Annotations in CSV (comma separate value) format can now be imported using Latitude and Longitude values; previously it was only possible to import CSV annotations in the British National Grid projection.
Ordnance Survey Roam
A number of changes have been made to the Ordnance Survey Roam application, predominantly to rationalise the data available at the different zoom levels:
- The vector version of VectorMap District (VMD) has been added to OS Roam and is available at the Local View zoom level (approx. 1:19,000) as an alternative map accessed through the Basemaps option:
- The Local Plus View has been removed and the datasets available in the District and Local Views have been rationalised. Full details of the datasets available in each View can be found on this help page.
Accessing Product Help [all Roam clients]
As well as updating the help pages to cover the changes listed above, we have also changed the Map Information panel in all Roam clients making it easier for users to get help on the particular map product(s) they are currently viewing in the map window.
- Hyperlinks to help pages for each product have been added to product names in all Roam clients. The screen grab below was taken from Geology Roam where the hyperlink takes the user through to a help page dedicated to the map product currently displayed in the map window (DiGMapGB-50 Rock Unit):
We hope you enjoy using these new features, and if you have any suggestions for improvements to the service please get in touch:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
First set of dataset updates in 2016
A number of datasets have been updated in January in both the Ordnance Survey and Marine collections.
We reported back in December that the new ‘No Marginallia’ version of SeaZone HydroView Charts were available to download through Marine Download. Since releasing this new version we have seen nearly 15% of downloads now requesting the new ‘No Marginalia’ version, which is great to see. Hot on the heels of this we have now made this new version available in the new Chart Roam application, which replaced Marine Maps. The ‘No Marginalia’ version was ideal for use in Chart Roam as the removed map marginalia means the charts are ideal for use in the slippy map interface in Chart Roam.
The tables below lists all the datasets that have been updated in each collection together with the publishing date for each one.
Ordnance Survey Roam
| Product Name | OS Publication Date |
| 1:25,000 Scale Colour Raster | December 2015 |
| 1:50,000 Scale Colour Raster | December 2015 |
| OS VectorMap® District | September 2015 |
Ordnance Survey Data Download
| Product Name | OSÂ Publication Date |
| 1:25,000 Scale Colour Raster | December 2015 |
| 1:50,000 Scale Colour Raster | December 2015 |
| Points of Interest | December 2015 |
| OS Open Names | January 2015 |
Chart Roam
| Product Name | SeaZone Publication Date |
| HydroView Charts | August 2015 |
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk