Happy #MapInfoMonday!
In today's article, I will go through several workflows to show you how you can create data to show in the 3D map in MapInfo Pro v2023.
I have picked airport zones as an example but I'll already now let you know that I'm not creating these the official way. My goal is not to create accurate airport zones but to show you how you can create data for your 3D map.
My resulting 3D map will look something like this.
In this first article, I will create the zones around the runways. In a follow-up article, we will create the zones at the end of the runways.
If you want to play along, I have shared the input table: the runways. I have drawn these myself using an aerial image so again these are not the official runways.
The first derived data set I want to create is some zones around the runways.
I start by creating a copy of my Runways table called ZonesRunways. As I need a combined buffer around all the runways, I selected the lines in the table ZonesRunways and combined these. In this way, I will only have one object for all runways.
As I want to create 5 zones around my runways but at different distances and different heights, I add two new columns to my table: Buffer and Elevation. Both are numerical.
I now use Copy & Paste to create four copies of my combined runways object. After that, I change the values in the two columns to reflect the wanted distance and elevation for the zones.
I have used these distances and elevations for my zones:
In the image below, you can see the map of the five runway zones as combined lines. In the Info window, you can see the result of clicking on the lines with the Info tool. It shows the original runway and five objects in the ZonesRunways table each with different buffer and elevation values.
As the MapInfo Pro user interface doesn't allow you to do object processing work on a table that supports M & Z values, I have until now worked with tables that don't support M & Z. Now I'll have to save my table into a new table that does support M & Z values to be able to assign Z values to my zones.
In the Save Copy of Table As dialog, make sure that you check the Support MZ option.
Update ZonesMZ
Set OBJ = ConvertToPline(Buffer(obj, 72, Buffer, "m"))
Below you can see the resulting 5 zones around the runways.
In this next step, we will assign the elevation values from the elevation column to each of the zones we created in the previous step.
We will use DrawTool, an add-in from the Marketplace to update the nodes with the elevation values. If you haven't already installed DrawTools, open the MapInfo Marketplace, locate DrawTools, and click the Install button.
Make the ZonesMZ layer editable and select all the records from the layer.
From the Nodes dropdown on the Spatial tab, click on the Update ZM Values control.
Now let's see how this looks in 3D. From the 3D tab click on New 3D map.
We will use the Mapzen Terrarium elevation source and the PreciselyBronze tile server layer as surface.
In the Add Layers from Map dialog, I select these layers: ZonesMZ and Runways
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Peter Horsbøll Møller
Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
Precisely | Trust in Data
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