Zero to Bing in 60 seconds: Give your MapGuide maps real-world context with commercial map layers

One of the new features in Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2011 is the ability to underlay your existing maps with layers from Google/Yahoo/Bing Maps. This technique was possible in Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2010, but required lots of manual setup and hacking around for it to work. With the 2011 release, support for doing this is built right into the MapGuide Studio user interface, making this process much simpler.

Before we proceed, ensure that your existing map definition only contains layers that use coordinate systems based on the real world. Arbitrary XY coordinate systems will not work here.

Also this feature can only be used with Fusion-based Flexible Layouts. This feature is not available with the basic AJAX viewer Web Layout.

The first thing to do is to make sure your map is in the correct coordinate system. To change your map definition’s coordinate system, open it with the Map Editor and click the button beside the Coordinate System field.

Google/Yahoo/Bing maps use a special coordinate system, which your MapGuide Map Definition also has to be in. The coordinate system in question is the Popular Visualisation CRS / Mercator. The code for this coordinate system is WGS84.PseudoMercator. Unfortunately, the coordinate system browser in MapGuide Studio is not the same as the one in AutoCAD Map3D, so here’s a screenshot of the coordinate system in question.

Once you have changed the coordinate system, save it. It doesn’t matter that your map may have layers that are in different coordinate systems, MapGuide will re-project your layers on-the-fly so that all the layers will correctly line up.

Having said that, on-the-fly re-projection of layers does incur a minor performance penalty. So if possible, make sure your source data is already in the WGS84.PseudoMercator coordinate system. AutoCAD Map3D and AutoCAD Civil3D have the tools to produce/export geospatial data into this coordinate system.

Now create a new Flexible Layout. Add your modified map definition to this layout.

Now if you scroll down, you’ll notice some new options.

What previously required lots of hacking of XML and HTML documents can now be done with a tick of the few boxes.
In here, simply choose the commercial map provider you wish to use. Note that for Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, they require valid API keys in order to use their services. Signing up for an API key is free, but you are bound by Google and Yahoo’s respective terms of usage. As you can no doubt see from the user interface, Bing does not require API keys.
Save your Flexible Layout. Your map which would’ve looked like this:

Now looks like this:

With a small tweak of the Map Definition and ticking of a few boxes in our Flexible Layout, we now have a MapGuide map overlaid on top of Google/Yahoo/Bing maps.