I export a lot of maps for customers who request them from our office. Recently I have seen more and more requests for us to export our GIS into the .KML or .KMZ file type so they can be viewed on Google Earth. I have no trouble exporting my maps into this format using ArcMap’s ‘Map to KML’ conversion tool in the Conversion Tools toolbox.
The issue I’m having is that I get a lot of feedback from customers that they can’t properly query the main layer of a map in Google Earth. Instead, Google Earth seems to choose the layer with the least amount of data as the query layer.
I’ve tried this myself and I can see what they are encountering. I know that turning off the conflicting layers will eventually force Google Earth to query the only active layer, but is there anything that I can do on my end to save them the trouble? This would also in turn save me time from having to troubleshoot this with them when they call. I’ve attached some screenshots…
I recently created this map using ArcMap and exported it into a .KMZ using the ‘Map to KML’ tool. The public that we serve loves this as they are able to utilize the strength of GIS in a free program like Google Earth, however when they go to query the features, they get this…
If they don’t know much about GIS they can’t tell that it’s because Google Earth has queried an almost empty layer instead of our main parcels layer. If I turn off the layer Google has chosen to query, it sometimes toggles to some other layer and sometimes goes to the right one.
So far this seems random, but I need to know if anyone knows how to set a priority to the layers when I create the KML on my end so that the finished product is more user friendly for the end users.