Air Photo with 2 Polygons Superimposed

Site Plan with photo illustrations
Data courtesy of Silvatech Consulting Ltd.

Traced Areas from a Scanned Map

Bitmap Images

Digital images (bitmaps) can be used to enhance the visual impact of a map or drawing. They can also be used to extract geometric information. The Terrain module allows you to import bitmap images in either BMP, JPG, Mr. SID, JPG2000, ECW or TIF format.  Images can be positioned, rotated and scaled. 

Images can also be used as a backgrounds, on which other information such as text or vectors can be superimposed (see Cutblock example). In this case, it is important that the bitmap be correctly positioned and scaled. Once a bitmap image has been scaled and positioned (georeferenced), it is possible to trace features on the image and calculate areas, distances angles etc.

Large bitmaps such as orthophotos can be included. Terrain will read georeference information (World File or GeoTif format).  Terrain will also save georeference information in a World File for use by other software.

Images can be included in maps for illustration purposes, as shown in the Site Plan example. In this case, the image can be positioned anywhere in the window and sized without concern for scale.

Bitmap images can be either photographs or scanned drawings as shown in the Scanned Map example. In this example a map was scanned, saved as a JPG file, and imported into the Terrain module. It was then sized using the scale bar on the map. Once correctly sized, areas and lengths can easily be determined by tracing over the image with the mouse.