Frequently Asked Questions about GIS and the IGIS Project

This page is for questions (or anticipated questions) asked by people involved with the IGIS project. The page is based on the iGIS project from year one and so some of the questions may not be relevant to year two. If you send me a question via email, remind me if you think it would be a good one to add here.

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Quite possibly, you did not check the box "Show icons for all users" when you installed the software. The easiest way around this is to uninstall My World and re-install making sure that you check the box this time.

It depends on where you got the data from. Lots of data that can be downloaded from the internet comes with metadata (data about data). You can usually find a section in the metadata describing the coordinate system that the data is stored in.

The original NED dataset from USGS has 30 meter resolution. We had to resample the data to 270 meter resolution because of the large filesize of the 30 meter data and the inability of My World to handle these large datasets on computers with a limited amount of RAM. The data has essentially been averaged across a large area and therefore the value at a given point may misrepresent what is actually going on at that point.

You can import images as you would any other Layer with one important difference. You can not just unproject image data as you would vector data with MyWorld. So you must indicate to MyWorld what projection to use so that it can project the vector data to match your image (kinda like that whole Mohammed/Mountain dilemma). Follow these steps for viewing images in MyWorld:

1. At the Construct tab, click the "Import Layer from File" button.
2. Browse for your image and click the "Open" button once you have selected it.
3. The image pops into the "All Data Files" library, find it and drag it into the layer list.
4. Switch to the visualize tab and change the projection (upper right) to the correct coordinate system for example ... State Plane ... Zone: West Virginia (North) ... Datum: NAD 1983 ... Units: Feet.

Tip: Put the images in the "C:\Program Files\My World GIS 3.0\data\images" folder where MyWorld is installed and edit the "Images.dlb" file. You can add images to the list in the dlb file and it will update the data library the next time you start MyWorld !!!!

The best and most definitive way to know this is to know the site that the images were downloaded from. DOQQ's from the MD DNR site are going to be in MD State Plane, NAD1983, with units of meters. Images downloaded from the West Virginia GIS Technical Center may be in WV State Plane (north Zone), NAD1983, with units of feet or UTM Zone 17, NAD1983, with units of meters.

There are 2 ways to do this (through the MyWorld interface or the sneaky backdoor method). Using the MyWorld interface, at the "Construct" tab, you click on the "Import Layer From File ..." button. Then you can browse for your shapefile. When you click the "Open" button, it adds the layer to the "All Data Files" library. Drag the layer into the "Layer List" to have a look at the layer. Then to add it to a library, you must go to the "Edit" menu and choose "Data Libraries ...". You can add any layer that shows up in the "All Data Files ..." library to an existing library or make your own new library.

The "Sneaky" way is to put the shapefile(s) in a folder with a dlb file that you make yourself. Open one of these dlb files up with a text editor (like notepad) to see how it is constructed. Once the dlb file exists and lists your shapefiles, it will automatically show up as a library the next time MyWorld is started.