Using Nearmap with Elk Workflow

Hello,

For those Australian's who use Elk I thought you might benefit from a little workflow I just worked up for bringing in geo-referenced aerial imagery downloaded from Nearmap into Grasshopper to overlay with maps made with Elk.

It requires to have a full subscription to Nearmap but if you are part of a University or company that has access it shouldn't be a problem. I also imagine that if you have all the same information I used for this workflow you should be able to get other geo-referenced files working using the same method. As long as the files are on UTM or a similar grid system.

Basic work flow is read in the image and its file name which contains the Lat and Lon at the center of the file. I then read the JGW World File that comes with the image to get some other information about the image for scaling. I also run a small VB script to get the pixel dimensions of the aerial image.

From this information I can calculate the images real world size and place it at the correct location using the additional component released from Timothy to transform Lat & Lon to the local Elk coordinates.

I'll admit it's probably a bit "hacky" in terms of scripting but it seems to work for my purposes. Feel free to point out anything that could be streamlined to make the script a bit smoother.

Enjoy!