Import or Export Google Earth friendly KML files
Introduction
You may use or at least have heard about Google Earth. Google Earth is an amazing application to visualize your farm or other real estate project. It’s free and everybody can use it, but it’s limited in its customization tools and sometimes tricky to use and quickly gets cluttered. Fortunately Farmapper helps with that. Farmapper supports KML import and export. You can use export KML to save your data in a format, which Google Earth understands. If you (or someone) created your maps in Google Earth before, then it’s also possible to get the KML file and import into Farmapper.
Export KML definition
To export your farm project to a KML file, click on the "Reports" button and choose “Generate KML Figure 1.
This will open a window where you can change name of the KML file Figure 2. The last thing you need to do to generate the document is to click "Generate".
The content of the KML file depends on the selection in the tracts and stickers lists. If you select nothing KML will contain the whole project. If you make some selections then the KML will only contain the selected files.
You can find the generated documents in "Docs" tab Figure 3.
Click the document and it will be download to your computer's resources and opening it will load it into the Google Earth application Figure 4.
Import KML definition
If you want to import data from the KML file to McFinney Farmapper. All you need to do is select "KML Import" from the "Inputs" list Figure 5. Immediately afterwards, the "Upload custom shapes from kml" window will be displayed. In the middle there is a button "Select file to upload" click on it and select from the resources of your computer the KML file that you want to open in Farmapper. After a while you will see a project that will contain the same elements as the file. Then you can work with projects, edit it and modify it as you like using all available McFinney Farmapper tools.
Some useful data is often contained in a .KMZ format Figure 6. This is basically a compressed file. There are some useful tricks to get the KML file from Google Earth in a format to import into Farmapper. First open the .KMZ file in Google Earth. Then drill down in the Google Earth panel on the left for the shape that you want. Right click and choose “Save Place As”. Rather than select a .kmz file save it as a .kml to your desktop. Then import this file to Farmapper and voila it should be quickly loaded to your project.
If you decide to open it immediately in the Google Earth application after awhile Google Earth will launch and the globe in the program will centre to the location where your imported farm is located. All you have to remember is that in order for the KML file to be opened, you must have the Google Earth or Google Earth Pro application installed on your computer.
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