Site visits are essential to well designed plans. Visualizing how future plan sets will appear in the field can be difficult without being able to efficiently georeference your current location in relation to your proposed plans. However, by using now ubiquitous technology, your current location on your future plan sets can be viewed easily. To do this, Google Earth is used in conjunction with a handheld Garmin GPS Unit and a laptop with an active internet connection (ie. tethered phone, network card..or cached images). The proposed plans are exported to Google Earth in KML/KMZ format; Google Earth is set to live GPS tracking; and the mobile internet connection will facilitate imagery regeneration.
Begin by exporting the drawing for use in Google Earth. Use the command “PublishKML” to export to a KMZ/KML file.
Turn on real-time GPS tracking in Google Earth under Tools>GPS in the menu bar. Select the Garmin PVT protocol and the interval desired between location refreshes. Start the real-time tracking.
View your current location on Google Earth in relation to your site’s linework.
