Map Making

[bwhite1986]

Hi all, I maybe looking in the wrong place altogether so please excuse my ignorance.

I am looking at building an interactive map. This doesn't need to necessarily use an image of the UK -but that would be a bonus.

It would need to hold personal customer information (business name and post code) so would need to be offline, hence building it myself.

It would need to be used for searching for companies, for example, I am in Newcastle tomorrow what customers are going to be near post code NE12 345.

Is there anyway of downloading a map (such as googlemaps) to place markers on? Can this be made more specific, for example
i) see a pic of UK (click north of map)
ii) see pic of north of UK (click Newcastle)
iii) see Newcastle with number of markers that once clicked would show company name

Again this doesn't need to be on a map, if it could be done on a city or town basis.

My apologies if this can not be done, but thought I'd ask the experts (shameless brown-nosing there I know!! ) If not, does anybody have any ideas, however basic, that I can look in to. Perhaps macros?

Thank you
Ben

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

The problem with doing it offline is that you will need access to a geo location database. I understand that you can only get these databases from the post office, I believe under licence.

I have seen some very nice solutions done with Google maps, however this is on-line, not what you wanted.

 

[btisjeff]

It does not sound like you want an actual Google Maps type system in your application. You don't seem to need full geographical information ( you don't need the map to know streets and addresses like Google Maps )

I am assuming you do want to show the maps within Access itself.

As I understand it would meet your needs to have a background image of a map, and allow users to drill down to get more detailed map images in response to clicks on your own defined regions. The underlying images could then be country maps or a map of a building, or even some totally fictual location.
You would also want to allow users to add graphical markers that are clickable, draggable, with associations between these markers and additional additional information .

Definitely this is doable.
One approach uses the MetaDraw ActiveX component. This is a commercial component and let me offer full disclosure that I represent the company publlishing this component. You can embed MetaDraw in Access form like any other ActiveX component. You can then load up a background image and draw polygon regions that act as hotspots. When the user clicks on a hotspot you can trap the event and jump to another map. You an also allow users to add graphic symbols and assign tags associating these symbols with database record IDs. Allow the user to store the organization name and other key information and put this in your database, then later when a user clicks on or hovers over a symbol you can trap an event and pull up the database record.

I hope this is helpful

jeff
Jeff -at - btis - dot - com
Bennet-Tec Information Systems

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Hi all, I maybe looking in the wrong place altogether so please excuse my ignorance.

I am looking at building an interactive map. This doesn't need to necessarily use an image of the UK -but that would be a bonus.

It would need to hold personal customer information (business name and post code) so would need to be offline, hence building it myself.

It would need to be used for searching for companies, for example, I am in Newcastle tomorrow what customers are going to be near post code NE12 345.

Is there anyway of downloading a map (such as googlemaps) to place markers on? Can this be made more specific, for example
i) see a pic of UK (click north of map)
ii) see pic of north of UK (click Newcastle)
iii) see Newcastle with number of markers that once clicked would show company name

Again this doesn't need to be on a map, if it could be done on a city or town basis.

My apologies if this can not be done, but thought I'd ask the experts (shameless brown-nosing there I know!! ) If not, does anybody have any ideas, however basic, that I can look in to. Perhaps macros?

Thank you
Ben