For this walkthrough, we'll be looking at the map from one of our recent blogposts: "Drones - a Soybean Grower’s Best Friend."
If you look at the sidebar on the left, you can see Annotation and Measurement options.:
Annotations and Measurements options with labels for the different tools
We have labeled them in the image above, and will be discussing each one below:
Before we dig into the different annotation types, it's worth going over the general annotation controls.
Please note that annotations, just like all of DroneDeploy, work best on the Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.
Here is an example annotation (from the Location marker example).
Example annotation
Changing Units
To change your preferred units for annotations, please navigate to Account Settings in your dashboard and navigate to Units about halfway down the page.
If you want to take note of a specific point, this is the tool for you. Once selected, you'll be asked to select a point on the map:
Moving it to a location of interest, and clicking, will generate a marker for that location:
A blue marker showing the barn, Notice the lat/long, comment box, and color options.
Here, we have selected to annotate the barn. When clicking, you will now see a latitude and longitude for that location, a text box in which to add notes, and the annotation controls. Once the comment is saved, you will see your name and date of the comment.
Saved comments will show a name and date.
You can find elevation of a single point in your map by simply placing a location marker under Annotations & Measurement
Elevation at Marker
View the elevation profile for a line drawn with the annotations tool. This is helpful to:
-Measure the height of certain features
-Measure the slope of the line segment (height change / distance)
-See if an area is flat/bumpy/sloped
To use this tool:
- Create a line using the distance tool.
- Click on the line so you see the cross arrows.
- View the elevation profile in the map panel at the left.
Selecting an area of interest, you can start highlighting the area you care about. Let's highlight the weeds in the field to the north:
To close the area, click on the first point, or double-click on your last point.
Every point you click on, will be adding to the boundary of the area in question. To close the area, click on the first point, or double-click on your last point.
5.8 acres of weeds
Once complete, we can change the color and add text to remind us of what the area is. Here, the weed-filled area is 5.8 acres, as shown at the top of the note.
The line tool will allow a similar annotation of a straight line, or series of lines.
A black line measuring the length of the field.
Here we measure the length of the field to be 4560.8 feet.
You are able to show/hide the annotations by clicking the toggle in the sidebar. This lets you see the original layers without the clutter:
Annotations hidden
Annotations hidden - notice the eye has a cross through it.
If you'd like to change the color of your current annotation, click on the small colored circle in the sidebar to choose a different color:
And select the new color you would like for your marker:
This section deals with what happens when annotated maps are shared. To learn more about sharing, see our Data Sharing documentation.
Sharing privately
When sharing privately, other users can view, add and reply to existing annotations - this allows you to get external advice on a field, as well as highlight any issues you may find on other users maps. Other users can then create conversations around your data.
Sharing publicly
When sharing publicly others will be able to view your annotations, but these will be read-only:
The only controls they will have is to show/hide annotations:
Public annotation view
To delete an entire annotation (and all conversations therein), click on the trashcan icon on the sidebar:
Happy mapping!