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Short news: MGRS grids, Gliffy to SketchUp, Excel hacks

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  • Barry Hunter at nearby.org.uk adds a new worker-bee network link to his impressive collection. It returns the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) (about) and gives you the exact reference for the screen’s center — be sure to zoom in to around 200km or closer.
  • Ah the perils of blogging stuff too early. And now I’m late with the news that Google is partnering with the Tour de France to bring you the Tour in Google Earth.
  • Avatech’s Earth Connector, for exporting to Google Earth from Autodesk is up to version 1.1, posted July 6.
  • BrandToBeDetermined notes that you can use Gliffy — a very slick and free in-browser Visio-like application — to make floor plans that you can then export as a PNG, JPG or SVG, ready for importing to SketchUp, where you can begin extruding it.
  • GIS for Archaeology and CRM has a nice find: A slew of UK archaeological sites are georeferenced with links to Google Earth here.
  • SOLA’s G1, a free converter for Mac and Windows that takes 3DS, DXF, OBJ and W3D files and converts them to KML, is up to version 1.6. Not sure what the improvements are, as my Japanese is terrible:-), but previous versions were very well received by this blog.
  • NASA World Wind 1.3.6 will have 3D clouds, sort of. Bull’s Rambles has the screenshot.
  • Much as I think that Terminal Air — a proposed “art” project that would track the CIA’s rendition flights in Google Earth from publicly sourced data — could contribute to the debate about their legality, I think it’s a bit lame to make a big brouhaha about just having the idea. And so is calling it art. Just do it already, and then you’ll deserve some attention, if it’s any good. (Via We-make-money-not-art)
  • Yet another great little hack that involves Barry Hunter: Link to Google Earth from within Excel by using Google’s geocoding feature on your addresses, like so:

    =HYPERLINK(“http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&output=kml&q=” & A2 & “,+” & B2,”Google Earth”)

    Where A2 and B2 are address fields.

2 thoughts on “Short news: MGRS grids, Gliffy to SketchUp, Excel hacks”

  1. I think the links has become mixed in the first point :( You appear to have linked to the IARU Locator Echo setup, and then mentioned the MGRS Gridlines. Not sure which one you meaning specify, probably the MGRS one?

    Also a smaller point, the first link shows nearby.co.uk, but links correctly to .org.uk, unfortuntaly that domain is something else.

    Keep up the great work!

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