An overview of mapping

There are two ways to digitize a paper map: one is to manually digitize with a digitizer, the other
is to convert the paper map to a raster image by scanning, and then vectorize the image using
specific GIS tools. Currently, digitizing with a digitizer is not supported in SuperMap. The
following will illustrate how to make a raster map from a scanned map in SuperMap.

The paper map to be used is a topographic map at the scale of 1:50000. The flow below shows
the main procedures concerned:

1 Preparation

Since the features on a paper map are of different types, you need to decide how many types of
datasets in which these features will be stored after vectorization. For example, the contour lines
on the paper map will be vectorized and stored in a line dataset, and the elevation points will be
vectorized and stored in a point dataset. You also need to determine what non-system fields
should be created for the attribute table of each dataset. For example, you can create two non-
system fields for the line dataset that stores the contour lines: an elevation field that records the
elevation value of each contour, and a code field that contains the code number of the contour
line on the paper map. The following example table lists the dataset types used to store the
features of different types on the map and the fields to be created for their attribute table:

Table Structure
Feature Dataset Dataset
Field
Type Name Type Field Name Field Type
Length
Short
Elevation 2
Integer
Contour Contour Line Dataset
Long
Code 4
Integer
Short
Elevation 2
Elevation Point Integer
Level Point
Point Dataset Long
Code 4
Integer
Name Text 50
Region
River River Long
Dataset Code 4
Integer
Village Village Text Dataset Name Text 50
 Long
Name Code 4
Integer
... ... ... ...

2 Input data

(1) Scanning the paper map

Scanning is a method that converts an analog map into a scanned image file in raster format
using a scanner. The scanned image, usually saved in in TIFF or BMP format, can be used as the
base map for vectorization.

It is recommended that before vectorizing, you do some processing work on the scanned image
using software such as PhotoShop, like rectification, noise removing, classification etc. to
improve the contrast and other qualities of the picture, so that the vectorizing will be more
efficient and the quality of the result vector data will be improved.

(2) Creating a datasource, defining a projection and importing the raster data.

When the raster data is available, you should first create a datasource. By convention, the
datasource is named with the map sheet code, and all the result datasets will be stored in this
datasource. Note that the coordinate system set for the new datasource should be the same as that
of the paper map. Then you can import the raster data into this datasource. For more information
about setting coordinate system, please refer to Map projection and coordinate system .

(3) Registration

Since the raster image imported to this datasource has no spatial reference, you have to register it
into real-world coordinates. After registration, the coordinates and projection of the raster image
will be rectified, and it will has the right projected coordinate system or geographic coordinate
system. Meanwhile, via registration the distortion caused by various factors that took place when
scanning will be corrected.
Click the Data Processing menu in SuperMap Deskpro, point to Registration, then click New
registration window. Select the registration layer and the reference layer, and then position the
control points in registration layer and reference layer respectively.

If there is no reference layer, you can locate control points in the registration layer and type their
actual coordinates, and then perform registration. Click the Tools menu in SuperMap, point to
Registration, then click New registration window. Select the registration layer and select blank in
the Dataset drop-down list of Reference layer, which means there is no reference layer, then
click OK to start setting control points. Click on the registration layer to locate the first control
point, and in the registration list below the image coordinate of the point will be displayed.
Double-click the row of this control point, and the Input Control Points window will pop up.
Type the map coordinates of this control point in the Control Point pane which you can read
from the original paper map, then click OK to go on locating the next control point until you
finish setting all the control points. The control points is expected to be distributed all over the
map, and you should avoid locating a lot of points in one region and few or even no points in
another region. If you don't need to register the map precisely, you can select the four corner
points as the control points. After finishing locating all the control points, select a method to
register or perform geometric correction: rectangle, linear or binomial. If the coordinates you
typed by reading from the original paper map are latitude/longitude coordinates, it is suggested
that you transform the latitude/longitude coordinates to projected coordinates, and it can be done
by clicking the Tools menu, pointing to Projection Transform and then clicking Coordinates
Transformation. After registration, the raster image can be act as the base map of digitizing.

In addition, if the size of the map is very big, and you have divided it into several sheets when
scanning. Before performing registration, you can first import these maps into the datasource and
then perform mosaic operation to join these separate maps together into one map by clicking the
Map menu and then clicking Raster Mosaic.

For more details about registration, please refer to How to perform map projection.

(4) Creating datasets and corresponding table structures

Based on the types of features on the paper map, create datasets of different types to store these
features as illustrated in the table at the beginning of this page (click Dataset on the menu bar,
then "New Dataset..."). In the Workspace Management Window, right-click each new dataset
and click Properties on the shortcut menu. In the Properties dialogue box, click the Table
Structure tab and you can add new fields or modify the existing fields, and set the name, type,
length and other parameters for the fields.

(5) The process of vectorizing by tracing on the screen

Now we can begin to vectorizing the raster map by tracing manually: for point features, click on
the point, and for line or region features, trace along the line or the boundary and click at
intervals. For example, when you want to vectorize the elevation points on the raster image, you
should first add the newly created point dataset, which is used to store the elevation points, to the
map window where the raster image has already been opened, then set the point dataset to
"editable", and draw points by clicking at the elevation points on the raster image (click Object
on the menu bar, then click Draw and click Point).

You can employ the semi-automatic tracing function to vectorize, which will save time and
avoid human error.

Note that once you finish vectorizing a feature, such as an elevation point, type its attribute
information immediately. You can do this in this way: double-click the feature, and the window
shown below will pop up, then you can type all the attribute information of this feature in the
corresponding positions. When you have finished typing attribute information for one feature,
you do not need to close this window, just continue to vectorize the next feature. When another
object is selected, this window will display the attribute settings for this object.

For more information about how to vectorize, please refer to How to perform vectorizing using
semi-automatic tracing .

During vectorizing, map operations like map browsing and editing will be frequently used, and
SuperMap Deskpro 6 provides keyboard shortcuts for these operations, which makes the
vectorizing more efficient. The shortcut keys are listed in the following table.

Map To Press
Browsing Zoom In Z
Zoom Out X
Zoom Free C
 Pan A
Select S
Refresh F5
View Entire F6
Go to previous
F7
view
Go to next view F8
Zoom in map
F11
directly
Zoom out map
F12
directly
Type the accurate
L
coordinates
Undo Ctrl + Z
Redo Ctrl + Y
Map Edit
Cut Ctrl + X
Copy Ctrl + C
Paste Ctrl + V
Select All Ctrl + A

3 Edit the map and modify errors

(1) Symbolizing and setting different styles

You need to design different marker symbols, line symbols and fill symbols and build the marker
symbol library, line symbol library and fill symbol library, and render the layers in distinct
styles. Standardized map symbolization will enable map readers to easily explore, understand
and analyze a map. On the Object Style toolbar, Text Style toolbar or in the Layer Control
dialogue (click Map on the menu bar, and click Layer Control), you can set style for each layer,
such as the fill style, foreground color and background color, symbol style, font etc. For different
types of features, there are familiar styles that make people read map more effectively, for
example, the railway , elevation point and so on.

(2) Examining and modifying the errors

During the steps above, errors that are not up to standard or reality may coursed by incorrect
operations of the operator, calculation error or other reasons, so you should check the result
vector data to see if graphics are omitted, if wrong attribute values are typed, if the precise is
satisfying and so forth, and adjust or correct the errors.

(3) Adjusting the order of the layers according to the original paper map

Click Layer Control in the Map menu, and in the pop up dialogue box, click the layer whose
position needs to adjust, then click "Move up", "Move down", "Move top" and "Map bottom" to
adjust the order of layers. Or you can click the Layer Control button , the Layer Control
dialogue box will also pop up as shown in the figure below.

Of course, in the Legend Manager, you can adjust the position of the layers freely by clicking
and dragging the layer up and down to the destination, as shown below.

(4) Saving the map

After setting the rendering styles for all the layers, you need to save all the layers as a map in
order to output or print it. Click Save Map... in the Map menu, and type the name of the map in
the displayed dialogue box.
Note: If the map will be used as digital map or will be published on internet, you can set the
display scale for each layer in the Layer Control dialogue box, so that under different display
scale, the display content may different.

4 Output the map

(1) Add the layout elements, set scale and generate the layout.

When all the setting work of the map is done, the next step is to print the map. In this step, the
thing we need to do is setting the size of the layout, and add the map to the layout. Make sure to
set the scale correctly in the Add Map dialogue box, and this scale is the scale of the printed map
sheet. Then we should add other mapping elements, such as the tile of the map (art character
element), map ID, annotation (text element), legend, scale, north arrow etc.

(2) Output and print the layout

At last, after setting the layout, click Print... in the File menu, set the corresponding parameters in
the pop up dialogue box, and click OK. Before that, make sure the computer has connected to the
printer or plotter, or other graphic output instrument. And a pleasing and practical map is
presented.

(3) Output to image files

In addition, you can save the map as image file (*.bmp or *.jpg format etc.), then the image file
can be processed in other image processing software and then published.

The map made by SuperMap Deskpro 6 can also be used in GIS application, to make digital map
and publish in Compact Disc, to be published in web site, and even more, it can be exported to
other GIS data format to be used in other system.