Google Earth - Do you use it?

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hurk27

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Portage, Indiana NEC: 2008
Moderator Note: I decided that this topic deserved it's own thread, I copied some posts from an existing thread. iwire


I do allot of apartment buildings and condos, that I landed through a property mangment corp, pay is great and up front when I need it, I have a small bucket truck that will reach 35' which will reach most lights. here is a photo done off of Goggle Earth that I took and marked the location of each light and what lamps they take, the onsite manager has a copy and marks which lights are out then will e-mail me it, save allot of guess work when going out to the site, and you have what you need the first time.

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hurk27 said:
I do allot of apartment buildings and condos, that I landed through a property mangment corp, pay is great and up front when I need it, I have a small bucket truck that will reach 35' which will reach most lights. here is a photo done off of Goggle Earth that I took and marked the location of each light and what lamps they take, the onsite manager has a copy and marks which lights are out then will e-mail me it, save allot of guess work when going out to the site, and you have what you need the first time.

View attachment 5354
Click to expand...

Very cool. I did a similar thing, only I drew my own maps and no one at the banks is going to give me any info. I do my quarterly survey and just mark which lights are out. I get to show up with all the right wattages and types of lamps.
 
hurk27 said:
here is a photo done off of Goggle Earth that I took and marked the location of each light and what lamps they take,
Click to expand...


Google Earth is a great tool. I am bidding some gutter de-icing and was able to use the measuring tool in Google earth to measure all the gutter lengths. Close enough for an estimate anyway. With street view you can look at the building before going there.

With Google Earth I have even been able to look at a building two states away to see where the electrical room was (I knew what the electrical room roof top fans look like at these buildings) so I could estimate footage.

One of our vendors sent us a Google Earth shot os a site with the photometric data of their proposed site lighting improvements superimposed on it.
 
mjf said:
Very cool. I did a similar thing, only I drew my own maps and no one at the banks is going to give me any info. I do my quarterly survey and just mark which lights are out. I get to show up with all the right wattages and types of lamps.
Click to expand...

Me and Goggle Earth have become good friends, I have two trenchers also and I use the measuring tool in Goggle Earth to measure long trenches for bidding, also the measuring tool will plot compass direction which I use when I need to aim a SCDA antenna or even a TV antenna, when the receiving site is out of view, just use an electronic compass.
A couple years ago I did a water supply system for potable water for a national park camp ground, the well was over a mile from the reservoir tanks, and I hit the amount of conduit and trench length right on the money with the measuring tool in GE, the nice thing is GE is a free down load, and will accept the USB garmin GPS inputs to plot out your path in GE.
 
Working at industrial plants the size of a small city I find it helpful to scout out where man switchyards and rooftop subs are located before a job.
 
And I've used it... I needed a drawing of a large-ish site and no civil's were available (site was maybe 1500' x 2500', with hills, an old canal, and part of a river). By carefully grabbing five or six photos of the site, stitching them together, and tracing them in autocad, I was able to get a useful site plan. Used a couple of known points to get the scale. It took a while, but in the end saved me more time than I spent tracing. OK, wasn't better than 5-10' accurate overall, but that was close enough.
 
I used to use it more in the past. Then I got a GPS, so I don't need it for maps any more.

But it does help on some jobs to identify the layout of the structures.
 
Google Earth MAy not be Free

Google Earth MAy not be Free

Check the fine print on Google earth. I think they may charge for commercial use. I don't think they would catch anyone here. I know if you use their image on IFC construction drawings you have to pay.
If you want more closer photos you can get them for money.
 
zbang said:
And I've used it... I needed a drawing of a large-ish site and no civil's were available (site was maybe 1500' x 2500', with hills, an old canal, and part of a river). By carefully grabbing five or six photos of the site, stitching them together, and tracing them in autocad, I was able to get a useful site plan. Used a couple of known points to get the scale. It took a while, but in the end saved me more time than I spent tracing. OK, wasn't better than 5-10' accurate overall, but that was close enough.
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Not sure why you had to use a couple of known point to get your reference, Google Earth has a measuring tool in it, and any time you need a photo select "save as a photo" in tools and you can save as much or little as you want, you can edit in any photo editor or just use paint like I do.
If you want to capture lines made with the measuring tool just hold down CTRL and hit the "print screen" in the upper right of your key board, then in paint hold down CTRL and hit the "V" key then save as a .JPG file for use in other programs.

Here are a couple more, the first one is a trench job for a church where I had to replace an undersize feeder to the rectory, I have a thread on here about it, the second one is for the aiming of a SCADA antenna, both are screen captures, but the earlier condo lights one was a "save as photo" from GE.

Rectory.jpgSCADA Antenna.jpg
pencil.png
Note the "Heading" in the measuring tool box, along with the distance, this tells me the direction I need to aim the antenna to.
 
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BJ Conner said:
Check the fine print on Google earth. I think they may charge for commercial use. I don't think they would catch anyone here. I know if you use their image on IFC construction drawings you have to pay.
If you want more closer photos you can get them for money.
Click to expand...

I asked about this in an e-mail, and they said as long as it is not a product or part of a product for sale, or is it part of an published advertisment, and you include all Google Earth logos and trade marks there is no problem using GE as a tool.
 
Also using the time slider (looks like a clock button on the tool bar) you can go back in time to available images in your area to remember when a house was built (Old Fart Tool) or even a subdivision was started, of course this will depend upon the available images, our area has a few, and there are some areas that go all the way back to 1935 (nope not from satellites) aerial photography. the oldest I found was up in Canada north east of Detroit, S.F., Ca. has some from 1944, as does Pearl Harbor, and Newwork, Nj. and NYC
 
I messed up in post 9

to save as image, click "edit" on tool bar, and select "copy image" open paint hold down CTRL and hit the "V" key, then save as .jpeg<< make sure you select this as paint defaults to .bmp and the file size will be toooo big.
 
hurk27 said:
Not sure why you had to use a couple of known point to get your reference, Google Earth has a measuring tool in it,
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Yes, but that doesn't help what I was doing (import the photo into autocad, scale to correct size, trace). It is good for simple measurements and sketches, though. There's also the problem that as you pan, the scale changes slightly, so connecting the photos can be a pain. Why not just use one image and trace that? Not enough detail, I was getting about 1500x900 for each image and connecting them 2 or 3 wide, that gave me better than 2' resolution for the roads and pathways.

You can do a lot with google earth (and sketch-up), especially the professional edition, but they're no substitute for CAD.
 
zbang said:
Yes, but that doesn't help what I was doing (import the photo into autocad, scale to correct size, trace). It is good for simple measurements and sketches, though. There's also the problem that as you pan, the scale changes slightly, so connecting the photos can be a pain. Why not just use one image and trace that? Not enough detail, I was getting about 1500x900 for each image and connecting them 2 or 3 wide, that gave me better than 2' resolution for the roads and pathways.

You can do a lot with google earth (and sketch-up), especially the professional edition, but they're no substitute for CAD.
Click to expand...

I agree about auto cad, but GE does have a scale you can use:

Water Tower Scale.jpg

Click on "view" in the tool bar, then check "Scale Legend" as long as the scale or elevation is the same the images should line up
 
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Google stuph is unfree when you SELL it. You're selling YOU, using GE.

I developed an GE application using it that is freely available to all; no problem. If I wanted only members of the Royal Order of Fingerburners to be able to see it; or if I changed for it -- then $$$$

But note the GE is not the only site out there. Look at Geohack; plug in a location. You'll get a nice presentation of many possible suppliers. I hate to say it, but Micro$oft's Bird's Eye has lots of airbreather [low level] imagery that can be a big help; and thus far, no one else does.
 
GE is great for a 'scouting' exercise. If you want really good, current images, you'll have to use a commercial service.

Still, I refer to it often in my job research. When a customer calls, I look up the address - it gives me an idea what the site looks like. I can usually identify where the service comes from, see the layout of driveways, alleys, and access roads, etc. The view can also help with finding the address; folks seem to hide their house numbers better than their ATM codes.
 
hurk27 said:
I do allot of apartment buildings and condos, that I landed through a property mangment corp, pay is great and up front when I need it, I have a small bucket truck that will reach 35' which will reach most lights. here is a photo done off of Goggle Earth that I took and marked the location of each light and what lamps they take, the onsite manager has a copy and marks which lights are out then will e-mail me it, save allot of guess work when going out to the site, and you have what you need the first time.
Click to expand...

Pretty nifty idea.

I like 480s idea of marking the heads also.:cool:
 
I use Google Earth all the time for directions and such. We were digging about 300 holes this past year in a rural area. If you look really close you can actually see the ditch lines for major pipelines. Some of them are there plain as day if you take a look.
 
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