Opening a Map or Dataset #

On BeaconGIS, your individual map layers are treated as individual Datasets, rather than each map having its own internal layers that only live inside that map. Having your layers as individual Dataset has the benefit of allowing you to have as few individual maps as possible and should reduce your workload significantly. For example, you can build a map for your local area and share it with your local group. Then you can add those shared datasets to your main private exploring map, allowing you to view and edit everything from one map, rather than having to move between maps to keep changes synced.

In this example, we will click on the view button on our test map. The two resources to the right of this map, are our individual “layers” aka Datasets for this Map resource. The temp map was created with both of these Datasets added in so they could be viewed simultaneously like a normal map.

Viewing a Map #

This is what your screen will look like after clicking view and letting the page load.

The Layers Panel #

This button will open up the Layers panel. In this panel you can rearrange Dataset layers and change layer opacity. There are more tools inside of this window, but BeaconGIS is in a view only state and these options will not be accessible to you yet.

The Toolbar #

The top blue bar contains some various links and settings.

Clicking All resources will take you back to the home screen.

Clicking the map icon will display the metadata of the map, the general contained location, and the resources linked to that particular map.

The Resource drop down contains Save, Save As, Share, and Delete options. Anytime you change the order of the layers, their visibility or other small things, the Resource tab will have a yellow dot next to it to notate unsaved changed.

The View drop down contains similar options to the Map icon from earlier.

The Edit dropdown contains options to Edit the maps Metadata, and Add Viewers (various plugins viewable to you, we recommend not changing these).

The far right side of this toolbar shows the full screen button.

The Search Side of the Map View #

This is where you can input addresses to find them on the map.

In order to search by coordinate, you will need to click the hamburger menu button on the right side of the search box, and select SEARCH BY COORDINATES. Then you will need to input each side of the coordinate string into the corresponding boxes. We are working on combining the boxes, but this won’t be available for awhile.

Next to the search box are the Print Button, the Add Layers to the Map Button, and the Ruler Button.

Print allows you to export an image of a map into a Document or Image for printing. You can control the DPI to print out higher resolution maps if you so desire.

The Add Layers to Map Button is a more advanced option. It will allow you to connect to publicly accessible GIS servers and pull them directly into BeaconGIS. We ask that you not use this feature if it shows as available to you.

The Ruler button allows you to measure between two points or multiple. It is an incredibly powerful tool.

Zooming and Panning #

In the bottom right hand corner, we have the zoom buttons and a few other options.

The 3D button is a basically the Google Earth feature. It allows you to use your middle mouse button or the globe in the top right next to the search bar, to move the map in a 3D space, creating an extremely unique way to view and print your maps.

The 3 dot menu will show additional options like “Show my current location” and allow you to turn on and off querying objects on the map.

Base Maps #

BeaconGIS has some various options for Base Maps for you to chose from.

The default view is Open Street Maps which is a free and open source alternative to Google Maps

The next option is MapBox Satellite…… This is a 3rd party provider of satellite imagery. This service is not free to us; only the first 200,000 requests are free. 200,000 requests might sound like a lot, but every time you change your zoom level or navigate around the map, it has to request new tiles. A single few hour session can easily rake up several hundred to a few thousand tile requests. You might see how this can unintentionally spiral out of control with multiple users. We ask that you keep use of this option to a minimum to reduce the chances of the Admin getting a surprise $500 invoice at the end of the month.

The next option is OpenTopoMaps which gives you access to a free topographic map. We’ve found it helpful in multiple ways and we hope you will too.

The last option is Sentinal 2, which is a the free satellite view provided by a 3rd party out in the EU and comes packaged with GeoNode. This satellite view is practically useless and we can’t imagine you will likely ever use it.

There is another option that shows the preview is not available. This is the empty background option, for those who want no map at all.