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I believe I read somewhere here that someone had gotten dimensions off a Google map. How is this done..??

I traced down the "footprint" (that's all that's left....) of the roundhouse I'll be building, and would like to get the dimensions as close to the original as possible. It's located in Lometa, TX....
You have to have Google Earth. Go to the building, then at the top of the screen - you see a ruler. Click that and you can them draw a line along each side of the building. You can get very accurate measurements.

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Another thing you can do, is measure a known standard, such as the access door(Most doors are 7' x 3 1/2').
Here's the method I use when trying to get dimensions from a picture. Its not right down to the inch, but when I built my Ore Hill station, I was only a foot off(Learned them after my LHS guy gave me some info from an old book, that had the actual dimensions, after I finished.....Go figure...) I figured I could live with a foot.

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88 has the way , standard battens were 2 inches wide . other than that if you could find old insruance maps(i forget the name there called) they would have the buildings foot print on them.
jim
I tried downloading Google Earth yesterday, which is what I'm told has the measuring capability, but my G@@%XXx'd computer won't let me...!!!!! It tells me I have no "rights" to install certain software.... Confusedhock:
I have run into this before, and have found no way for me to have these "rights". I guess only God himself can do this sort of thing on my computer (Thanks Microsoft...), but I haven't found a link or email address to take it up with Him....
Any of you earthlings know how I can regain control over MY computer..?? Running Vista...of course.... Curse
Hi Gus.
I think what you need to do for your computer is open control panel and then open user accounts. Then you need to find the line that says
" change your account type". After the pop up, there will be a part that says " select your new account type ". You want to change that to administrator. Once you change that you should be able to download the program.
Not to deter you, but be careful though. This gives you almost full access to the computer, so you can mess up the computer big time.

Loren
Steamtrains Wrote:I Any of you earthlings know how I can regain control over MY computer..?? Running Vista...of course.... Curse

Thats your problem right there............
Gus, you don’t necessarily need Google earth. I usually use the bird’s eye view of Bing Maps (if it is available for that area). In the lower right corner you’ll see a little ruler that shows the scale of the pic on the screen. If I take a real ruler and measure the dimensions of a structure on the screen, I can compare them to this ruler in the corner. This method is not totally accurate, but it is good enough to get a good idea of the size of the building. To get the other dimension of a structure, I am using exactly the same method as Ed.
jim currie Wrote:88 has the way , standard battens were 2 inches wide . other than that if you could find old insruance maps(i forget the name there called) they would have the buildings foot print on them.
jim
Sanborn Fire Maps????