Category Archives: Digimap Roam

Digimap adds street names to search results

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Until now, Digimap has always used the 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer to provide search results when using the interface.

Searching for a street name in Digimap Roam

We have now added street names to the search results in Roam, so you can get more detailed results for your search locations. The locations of the streets come from the OS Locator™ gazetteer which we have been working to include since Ordnance Survey made it an OS OpenData™ product. When using the search interface you can now put in a street name and search for it, though we would recommend adding the name of the place the street is located in too, particularly if it is a relatively common street name. The best results in urban areas are still achieved by using postcodes as these can often resolve to a particular part of the street.  However in rural areas where postcodes can be very large, street names can give you the best results.

The search takes all the terms you enter and adds weights to each one; if you enter a full postcode it will just use this to pinpoint your location. If you are not sure your postcode is completely accurate in can be better to leave it out if you have more reliable information. Any street numbers or house names are ignored by the search as these are not stored in the OS Locator or 1:50 000 Gazetteers. The remaining search terms are run against the two gazetteers to produce a list of potential matches.

Be careful when searching for road names that are also places; searching for London Road in Edinburgh will also find Edinburgh Road in London and other possibilities from each city.  The weighting usually puts the best match at the top, though you may need to look a little further down the results list sometimes.

We will continue to work on the search abilities in Digimap to improve the results we return, please let us know if you have any questions:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
  • Phone: 0131 650 3302

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Digimap Roam updates now in service

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The changes we previewed in the last blog post have now been put into service.

New Roam Interface in Development

We hope that you find the these changes an improvement and we would really appreciate any feedback you may have:

  • email: edina@ed.ac.uk
  • phone: 0131 650 3302

Read the previous blog posts about the updates to learn more about the changes we have made:

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Digimap Roam Interfaces: Three key changes you need to know about

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All the Digimap Roam interfaces are due to change this August, with the provisional date set to Tuesday the 13th. There are three specific changes that all existing users of any of the Roam interfaces need to know:

Search Changes

To search for your chosen location you now click on the Search button found above the map on the right-hand side.

The search button in new Roam updateOnce you have clicked the Search button a new window will open allowing you to do a simple search for a place name or postcode, or a more advanced search using coordinates on either the British National Grid as a grid reference or Eastings and Northings, or as Latitude and Longitude values.

The opening search tab in Roam The advanced search tab in Roam

Print Changes

To make a PDF, PNG or JPG print file of your map you now click on the Print button which can be found above the map on the left-hand side.

The location of the Print buton in the updated Roam interfaceOnce you have clicked the Print button a new window will open allowing you to change the print options such as paper size, orientation and scale.

New Roam Print Interface in Development

Once you are happy with the settings click Generate Print File, you will be asked to save the file created in the usual way for your browser.

Opening and Saving Maps and Annotations

The Open button for "My Maps" and importing annotationsDon’t panic! All your saved maps and annotations from the previous version of Roam will all still be available. To open existing maps or annotations click on the Open button and then My Maps… Once you have clicked on the button a new window will open that allows you to access all the maps and annotations you have saved in any of the Roam interfaces. Annotations are now saved as part of your Map!

Opening saved maps and annotations

In this window you can choose your map and also delete ones you no longer need. If you made a map in a different Roam, opening it will take you to the location and the equivalent zoom level. If it had Annotations, these will be drawn on the new map.

The Open button also allows you to import annotations from a file saved on your computer. Click on the Annotations from file… option to open a window where you can specify the file you want to upload.

The button to open the Import Annotations windowThe import Annotations window

When using the service you can click on the blue question mark icon for help on how to use this feature.

When it comes to saving your maps and annotations you now just click on the Save button and again pick the My Maps… option. This will open the Save My Map window where you save both the map and any annotations that are on it.

The Save button in New RoamThe Save My Maps window in New Roam

In a similar way to importing annotations, to Export them to a file you click the Save button and then choose the Annotations to file… In the window that opens select the format of the file you want to save and give it a name; clicking Export will then download the file to your web browser’s usual location.

The Save annotation to file button in the updated Roam interfaceThe Export Annotations window in the updated Roam interface

Other Changes

There are several other changes to the interface that make it easier to use some features of Roam that you may have missed in the past, see this previous blog post for more information:

 Digimap Roam Interface: Important Changes this Summer

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about the new interface:

  • Tel: 0131 650 332
  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

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Save, Import & Export Annotations from Digimap Roam

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Save, Import and Export Annotations tools for Roam

From left to right: “View saved annotations”, “Save annotations”, “Import” and “Export”.

Recent enhancements to all Roam applications in Digimap (OS, Geology, Ancient and Marine) mean you can now save, import and export annotations. The new tools can be found under the ‘My Annotations’ set of tools on Annotations Toolbar.

The new Save function enables you to work on creating and editing annotations in more than one Digimap session. You can now save your work and come back to it another day. Hit the Save button to store your annotations and retrieve them any time by clicking the ‘View saved annotations’ button. Any annotations that you save in one application (e.g. OS Roam) can be opened in any other Roam client (e.g. Ancient Roam) you have access to. This is a great function that enables you to digitise a set of annotations based on one type of map, and then open them up in another Roam application to view on a different type of map. For example, you could use OS Roam to annotate a detailed map showing a proposed new building. You can then save those annotations and open them up in Geology Roam to view the geology underneath your proposed new building.

If you have a spatial dataset, you can now import it into any Roam application to view those features as annotations. This could be a dataset you have created in a GIS, downloaded from Digimap or another data provider, tracks or points surveyed using a GPS unit or a geocoded table of survey results. You can import Shapefiles, KML, GPX, CSV and GeoJSON datasets. Click the ‘Import’ button under ‘My Annotations’ on the toolbar and navigate to your dataset to import. This feature means you can quickly and easily visualise datasets that you have created or obtained from elsewhere on top of maps in any of the Roam clients.

Proposed Wind Farm locations dataset downloaded from ShareGeo Open (http://hdl.handle.net/10672/294) as a shapefile and imported into Roam as annotations.

In addition to importing, you can also export your annotations  in Shapefile, KML and GeoJSON formats by clicking on the “Export” icon on the My Annotations tools. These formats cover the most popular GIS and Web Mapping software packages, such as ArcGIS, Quantum GIS, Google Earth and OpenLayers.

For more information on using the Annotation Tool have a look at the “How to” help page here: How to use the Annotation Tools in Digimap Roam

NOTE:If you create annotations by tracing features on a Roam map you will need to credit any maps you go on to make using the annotations with the appropriate copyright statement. Any geographic data you generate from a map is called “derived data” and is still copyright to the creators of the original map.

The copyright statement is added automatically if you print the map from Roam, however you will need to add in the statement manually if you export annotations and use them in other software. The statement to include can be found in the Terms of Use for the service you are using, just click the link a the bottom right of the Roam interface.

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