Tutorial: Create a Simple Icon Map in Google Earth

Estimated time: 3 minutes.

If this is the first lesson you’ve done, please be sure you've opened the Icons_Simple_01.RwDat data file.

! These lessons require that you have Google Earth installed on your computer. Google Earth is not installed along with RockWorks. Please visit www.earth.google.com for download and licensing information.

1. Click on the EarthApps menu on the right side of the RockWorks Utilities menu ribbon, click on Points, and choose the Icons | Simple menu option.
    
2. Input Columns: In the prompts along the left side of the window, be sure the following columns are selected. This tells RockWorks which columns contain which data. (If the wrong column title is displayed, just click on the down-arrow and scroll up or down to the correct column title.)
   • X: Longitude
   • Y: Latitude

Next, set up the map layers in the next pane to the right, where there's a "tree menu" with a variety of map options. Expand and collapse headings by clicking on the small "+" or "-" buttons.

3. Icon: This setting establishes the icon design to be used to represent the sample locations in the Google Earth. Click on the existing picture to the right to choose an icon design for the sites.
    
4. Include Labels: Check this option to include labels with the icons.  Expand the heading to access the label options.
   • Label Column: Click to the right to select the name of the column in the data file that contains the text to be used as the labels. Choose the Sample ID column.
   • Label Color: Click to the right, on the color sample box, to choose a color for the labels. When displayed in Google Earth, light colors are usually preferable. (Defaut = white)
   • Label Size: Set this to 1.0 (Rule of thumb: 0.5 will create small labels, 2.0 large labels.)
      
5. Click the Process button at the bottom of the Icon Map window.
   

The program will create a KML file listing the icons at the point locations. It will create a KMZ (zip) file containing the KML file. The Google Earth KML and KMZ file names will be assigned automatically.

6. If RockWorks displays the KMZ name in a popup window for your reference, you can confirm:
   • Automatically load file into Google Earth: Be sure this is checked if you want to display the output at this time.
   • Show this message every time a KMZ File is Created: If checked, this window will be displayed each time a Google Earth output is created. Uncheck this if you prefer not to see this window in the future.
     (Both of these settings are also available via the Preferences menu.)
     
   • Click OK to continue or Cancel to cancel the operation.

The resulting map will be displayed in Google Earth, if requested. The "Icons" will be listed under Temporary Places on the left side of the Google Earth display. You can expand the heading to see the individual sites, and the checkboxes can be used to turn individual sites as well as the entire group on/off.

Feel free to take a moment to explore this display.

Click on the Icon Maps link below for information about other types of icon maps you can create.

7. If you would like to save this group of icons, right-click on it and choose Save to My Places.
   
   
8. You can leave the Google Earth window open if you'll be doing the next lesson.
    

  Icon Maps

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