Floor Maps

[Alex Galie]

Hello all,

I'm a little new to Silverlight and I'm currently developing an application that will display a list of devices on a "floor map" by selecting floors in a building.

I've been trying so far with approaches like canvas, fixed-size grids but all come with some pitfalls. Finally, I discovered the map control here and I thought I should ask more experienced people what would be the best way to go for this.

The following functionalities should be supported:

• devices (items) are draggable around the map
• setting a background image of the actual floor plan
• clicking on a device will bring up a bubble with detailed information
• zoom in/out

Can I use the Map control for this or is it overkill ? I don't actually use any geographical information, the floor maps will be just some jpegs provided by the customer, but the other map features like panning, zooming, location pins etc. look interesting.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Alex

[Ves]

Hi Alex,

Generally, the intended and expected use for RadMap would involve geographic data. RadMap is not designed for this scenario, so supporting it would require a significant amount of coding. 

Still, a possible approach would be to implement a custom provider. You can take a look at OpenStreetMapProvider implementation (Controls\DataVisualization\Map\Providers\OpenStreetMap.cs in the source code) showing the bare minimum required to implement a custom provider. Specifically, GetTile method shows how an image uri is composed, based on tile level (zoom) and position.

You can achieve all the items in your list, but you would still need to implement them manually -- for draggable items you can take a look at our DragAndDrop framework, the background image would be provided by the custom map provider and for opening a popup you would need to handle the corresponding mouse events.

Sincerely,
Ves
the Telerik team

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[Alex Galie]

Thanks Ves.

[Support ATT]

Hi Alex

I'm looking for the same application. Have you any projects examples ?

best regards
toprak

[Andrey]

Hello Toprak Abdullah,

Please, take a look into the following example in our demo application:

http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#Map/Hotel

It looks similar to the one you've referenced. It uses ESRI shape files to represent hotel floor plan and objects on it.

There are several tools on the market which allow creation and editing of ESRI shape files (ArcGIS, MapWindow GIS and so on). Some of them are quite expensive, some are free. Review of these tools is outside of the scope of RadMap support, you can find all the information you need in the Internet.

Implementation of the scenario when floor plan is represented by image is simple, because you would not need to create ESRI shape files. You can show floor plan using UriImageProvider and then put some map shapes (MapPolyline, MapPolygon, MapPath and so on) over it. But it is less functional, because you will not be able to select rooms on the floor plan, but map shapes only.

Another problem is serialization/deserialization of the map shapes that are shown over the map. RadMap does not have a built in functionality for this, so you have to create it by yourself.

Best wishes,
Andrey Murzov
the Telerik team