The Method to Make Google Satellite Map and Vector

Electronic Map Overlay

This article is talking about how to overlay the Google satellite map and vector electronic map. There are some steps you can follow. Keep reading please.

Step 1:First you need to download and install Maps Downloader For Google Satellite, if you havn't got this software, you can download it for a free trial.Install ESRI ArcGIS 10.0, we will use the ArcMap in this software. You can Google it.

Step 2:launch Maps Downloader For Google Satellite, as you can see the following picture.

Here we take Chengdu Second Ring Road, China for example to illustrate how to make Google Satellite Map and Vector Electronic Map overlay. So we need to enter" Chengdu" and click " Search" button to navigate to the location of "Chengdu" as shown below.

When searching the name of the city, , the software will automatically display the administrative area. If you don't want to download this administrative region but want to download within the Second Ring Road , Chengdu, we can click the" Select by Polygon" button( in this case the

administrative regions automatically disappear） , select the entire range of the Second Ring Road , as shown below.

Double-click the region you choose, it will display the "New Task " dialog box in which we can select only 19 , and this level of resolution is 0.6 meters , it can meet the majority of needs. Because we want to overlay and vector data, there is no need to download the label in the dialog box to cancel the label hook options, as follows figure.

Click the "OK" button to start downloading the satellite map. You can also separately click “Map Blocks" or “Export|Mosaic to Images" tab to switch the view. As shown below.

After download completely, you will be asked whether to export the picture , just click "Yes" on it. Select picture type as "GeoTIF", then click on the " Output" button to start outputing map data , as shown below.

Step 3: Dynamic Projection.

Since Google Maps is Mercator projection, and the coordinate system of the vector that we need to overlay is WGS84, coordinates mismatch will cause the data can not be overlayed.This problem we can use the function of dynamic projection of ArcMap to solve which first for the specified projection blank project and then import the data, the data is automatically set to the current coordinate system to display data and that is dynamic projection.First start ArcMap software , and then right-click on "Layers".

Select "Properties ..." in the displayed context menu displays "Data Frame Properties" dialog box, and then select the "Coordinate System" tab , as shown below in the dialog box .

Select "Predefined> Geographic Coordinate Systems> World> WGS 1984" in the "Select a coordinate system" area of the dialog box , and then click the " OK" button to complete the setup, as shown below.

Step 4 Load Satellite Map DataAfter finish the coordinate system settings, click" Add Data" button to start add satellite map data, as shown below.

Choose the TIF files that we have downloaded, and click " Add" button to add the data, as shown below.

Then click " Yes" button to create an image of the pyramid so that zooming more smoother, as shown below.

After finish creating the Pyramid it will display the loaded image thumbnails, as shown below.

In order to remove the black areas , making the map more beautiful, we need to set the black as transparent. Right-click on the image layer , select "Properties ..." from the menu, as shown below.

Select the "Display Background Value" in the "Layer Properties" dialog box , and then click the OK button to filter black , as shown below.

Step 5 Overlay vector dataClick again "Add Data" button and display the "Add Data" dialog box, open the folder where the Chengdu vector data in the dialog box , as shown below.

Select all map files, and click the "Add" button to load all selected vector data to ArcMap, as shown below.

Enlarge the map, the overlayed effect of the road is very good , as shown below.

I hope you enjoy this tutorial, you can make further development on it. And you can download it for a free trial. Thanks for reading!