Radius Maps

September 21, 2005 2:28 PM

Is there a free, online tool that allows you to create a radius map?

I need to create a series of maps with a 50-mile radius around a specific address, but my boss doesn't have a budget for any software. Is there a googlemap hack (or something similar) that lets you do this?

posted by grateful to grab bag (4 comments total)

grateful: Just zoom to the right size and then compose the picture in photoshop/paintbrush/whatever.

You should be able to use the same circle.

To figure out how large of a circle to draw, just make one ten times wider then the scale key on the bottom of the map (if you're zoomed out so that the scale shows 10mi, 20km)
posted by delmoi at 2:57 PM on September 21, 2005

This page uses google maps + census data to create a map with circles of a radius of 1, 3, and 5 miles so I'm sure it's possible. The creators of the application have an e-mail address and you might be able to work with them (or mess around on your own) to figure out how they're drawing their circles.

If you've only got a couple of maps to do (and don't need to dynamically generate them), delmoi's suggeestion of photoshop is probably the easiest way to go. Once you figure out how wide 50 miles is at a particular zoom level, you can just keep the radius circle as a different layer and move it around to different places on the map pretty easily.
posted by freshgroundpepper at 3:58 PM on September 21, 2005

Thanks. I'll try these suggestions, and keep looking for other solutions.
posted by grateful at 6:29 AM on September 22, 2005

Google Earth Plus ($20) allows you to draw radius maps. While this breaks the "free" criteria, it actually is the best solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, I still couldn't successfully justify the expense on what was a one-time project, so I drew a straight 50-mile line in standard Google Earth, saved the image, pulled it up in PowerPoint (ugh!) and used the drawing tools to approximate a 50 mile circle.

Close enough for this project.
posted by grateful at 8:19 AM on October 11, 2005