For my degree I have to design, staff, budget and equip a patrol division of a police Department for the City of Myrtle Beach. While time consuming it's not too hard, however I am having trouble with one aspect of the project, I need a map that I can create patrol zones overplayed on the city of Myrtle Beach. Anyone have any good options? I know we have some really smart and diverse backgrounds on here, so I know someone has this answer.
Thanks
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GOOGLE MAPPER
this might be of some help, you can create place markers and create zones on any area google maps has. Step by step on how to create said sheet and hopefully everything you would need.
Depending on where youre a student you could probably download arcmap for free. If thats the case go get it and do it via GIS
Once I understand how to use it I'll give it a shot. I'm more of a big map on wall and colored overlays kind of guy so this stuff is all new to me.
if you don't mind being low tech, you can just use photoshop or some alternative. Screen shot the maps you want off of google, paste them into photoshop and then make partially transparent layers where you can draw your regions.
here's an older photoshop-esque program that could do the trick. Unzip the folder anywhere and open psp.exe. Find the maps you want on google and use windows snipping tool to grab what you want. In Paint Shop Pro, hit CTRL+V to create a new drawing from your snippy. Then create a new layer and change the transparency to 50 or and start drawing your regions.
GIMP is also a free photoshop-esque program
I've mostly transitioned to using GIMP, but I've found the learning curve is a little steeper just because there are so many more functions.
Hm, I can see that, but the documentation is pretty good, so I find it easy to find an example that does what I want that I can follow along with...
The big issue I'm finding using Google is most maps don't show just the city of Myrtle Beach boundaries. They show the "beach" area which is actually Horry County, Myrtle Beach city, city of Atlantic beach, briarcliff acres, and North Myrtle Beach.
I have found that Bing maps are better at showing city or county boundaries.
I hate how they want to charge $100 a year for personal use. If it were cheaper/not a subscription I'd be willing to give esri my money... once I have some.
Same boat here. I loved working gis at tech in my forestry classes and even took an advanced gis class for an elective because I like it so much, but now I can't afford a subscription to keep doing freelance map work. If anyone knows a good alternative to arcmap and arcgis let me know please
QGIS
This might help.
LINK
Hopefully you can find a way to manipulate that using something you're comfortable with. If you need GIS help have Joe send you my email address. Worst case, I can help you make a shapefile from a sketch you've created.