Duke University Unveils a 3D Campus Map

A good university campus map needs to be able to help visitors and students quickly find the building or room that they are looking for.

If the buildings and campus are as beautiful as Duke University then it might also be worth pushing the boat out and creating a full 3D map. The Duke University Campus Map not only lets you view categories of location (for example libraries, residence halls, dining etc) it also includes 3D models of the whole campus.

Concept3D worked with Duke University to create the 3D models, which can be viewed by selecting 'Earth 3D' on the map. This will switch the 2D Google Map to the Google Earth browser plugin.

University of Twente Custom Street Views

The University of Twente is building a campus tour using the Custom Street View option in the Google Maps API.

The tour seems to still be a work in progress but already features some great custom Street Views of the 'Little Tower of Drienerlo' (pictured) and some Street Views that go inside the campus buildings.

The 'Little Tower of Drienerlo' is an art work by Wim T. Schippers which depicts the top of a church tower, giving the impression that a church lies at the bottom of the university pond.

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The University of Montana on Google Maps

I came across this beta campus map of The University of Montana today. The map includes a couple of nice features to help students and visitors find their way around the campus.

The Google Map includes a transparent overlay that adds interactivity to the buildings on the map. Users can click on individual buildings and get links to the building's page on the university website and to printouts of floor plans of the building.

The map also includes a nice directions feature that allows users to quickly select and find walking, driving and bus directions between different locations at the university.

Other layers allow users to view photos, art exhibitions, bus-stops, parking spots, places to eat and wi-fi locations.

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How to Make a Campus Map

Loughborough University's campus map is a great example of how to use the Google Maps API to help students and visitors find their way around a large campus.

The map uses the custom overlays function to overlay a custom map of the university on top of the Google Map. The custom map overlay includes features and locations that are not on Google Map's own map tiles, such as trees, tennis courts, football pitches etc.

The map also makes good use of polygons to make buildings on the map interactive. If you click on any of the buildings you can view the building's name, a photo of the building and links to its page on the university's website.

Finally, the map includes a very nice search facility that allows you to search for a building or feature by name or by category.

Loughborough University Campus Map

Hat-tip: Michael Lee

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Brown University on Google Maps

Brown University are using Google Maps to help students and visitors find buildings, parking lots and other facilities on their campus.

The Google Map uses a map overlay of the campus, which shows the names of the college buildings and is color-coded for ease of use. If you click on a building you can view a thumbnail photo and click on links to a video, a floor-plan of the building and its web page.

The Brown University Campus Map was developed by Fortune Ganesh.

Brown University - Campus Map

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Google Maps on Campus

University of Southampton Campus Map

Postgraduate student Colin Williams has created a campus map for Southampton University in the the UK using Google Maps and the University's Open Data Service.

The map shows all the University's campus buildings, live bus times for nearby stops and a number of categories of points of information. The detail for each category of marker is very impressive. For example, the retail category not only displays the locations of all shops on campus but also the locations of all vending machines. It even tells you what each vending machine sells.

The source-code for the map and the map marker set have been made available by Colin under a creative commons licence.

Via: OUseful.info

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Campus Travel on Google Maps

Campus Alternative Transportation Map

Wayne State University has produced a Google Map to show all the alternative methods of transportation on the unviersity's campus.

The map displays all the bus routes, campus shuttles, bike racks, parking lots, trains, walking routes and campus retail locations. The bus routes show all the bus stops with links to the schedules. The retail outlets include the locations of banks, restaurants, pharmacies, snack shops, bookstores, hair salons and the copy/shipping center.

The entire project was completed by and is maintained by students with some help from the Marketing and Communications department in the branding and functionality of the map.

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Pomona College on Google Maps

Pomona College Tour

This nicely designed campus map of Pomona College in Los Angeles shows the location of campus buidlings, halls of residence and campus services.

The map includes photographs of some of the buildings and even includes historical information about some of the more interesting buildings on campus. Those venues on the university that have Gowalla and foursquare entries even contain links to read users' tips.

The map markers are color-coded and the categories of marker can be selected from the menu at the top of the map.

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