Vector map of USA?

[John Thompson]

I'm sure most you are familar with the coin map that was featured in Wood magazine a coupla years ago. I'd like to do something a little different, mainly use CNC to engrave the state borders in the wood. The problem is that I need a vector type map of the USA. Something in DXF, IGES, or similar format, and free. A quick google search turns up either pay, or not what I want at all.

Anyone have one?

Oh yeah, I did look into having the layout from the article scanned and digitized. Only one place locally could do it, and for a very high price and in a format I couldn't use.

John

[Charles]

There is the micro world data bank

some info at:

sure how you would extract the data to use with CNC though

[George]

A sawbuck spent on a clipart disk from IMSI (65,000 ) will get you metafile maps. How you put them into your equipment thereafter is up to you. I print, stick and cut a lot of clipart on the scrollsaw. Good geography lessons in puzzles.

[Juergen Hannappel]

xfig has one in it's libraries, the format is simple (just sequences of x/y ccordinates. It's containes in probably any recent linux distribution, in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xfig/Libraries/Maps/USA/usa.fig

[Juergen Hannappel]

[...]

... if you had provided a working email adress in your post you would find that in your inbox...

[Jon]

I checked QuickCAD. It will do import/export DXF types. Would that help?

[John Thompson]

I found some USA maps on some clipart (600,000 images collection), but when I blew it up to the size I wanted, there were a lot of gaps between some of the eastern states!

John

[John Thompson]

I can convert many types of files to the one I need. My problem is finding a map in any of the formats I can use/convert is the sticky part.

Remove the forhire to Email me.

John

[CW]

If you can find something usable on the net (jpg, gif,ect) I can convert it to dxf. Let me know threw the group as my email is down as far as receiving.

[hex]

Ok, depending on how much work you are willing to do this may or may not be an option. The US geological survey has a data base called the TIGER line system. Basically, it contains line segments for all borders, roads, RR's etc. To turn it into something useful is work. The GRASS project (a GIS from army corp of engineers, used to be hosted at Baylor University -- site doesn't load -- wonder if Dub-Rummy-HomerLand security decided it was too dangerous to know where the roads are!) can read the tiger data. A few years ago I extracted the entire sub-set of lines that define borders between counties --- took about a day to get the scripting within GRASS right and multiple days to fix the pathologies in the data.

Good luck,

hex

-30-

[CW]

It's surprising how much they charge for this kind of stuff. I am limited to an A size page but I can do this in less than five minutes.