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 Earth_Icons_Proportional_OilWells.RwDat data file.

! These lessons require that you have Google Earth installed on your computer. Google Earth Desktop is not installed along with RockWorks. Please visit https://www.google.com/earth/versions/#earth-pro for download and licensing information.

1. Click on the Earth menu in the Utilities menu ribbon. Select Sample Point Icons.
   
   
2. Data Columns: In the prompts on this tab, 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 (Easting): Surface Lon
   • Y (Northing): Surface Lat
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3. Icon Attributes: Click on this tab to set up how the map symbols will look.
   • Icons: Click Fixed. Click the icon image to choose the icon to be used for all of the sites.
   • Size: Click Fixed and be sure the size is set to 1.0.
   • Altitude: Click Fixed and be sure it is set to 10.0 meters.
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4. Labels: Check this option to include labels with the icons.
   • 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 API column.
   • Label Color: Click 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.)
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5. Output Options: These settings let you assign a name automatically (default) or manually for the Google Earth KMZ file to be created, and whether the map is to be displayed on completion (default = yes).
   
6. Click the Continue button at the bottom of the window to proceed.
   

   RockWorks will create a KML file listing the icons at the point locations. It will create a KMZ (zip) file containing the KML file.

   The resulting map will be displayed in Google Earth, if requested. The "Points" 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 Earth 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.
   

  Earth Maps

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