NEW LAYERS AND QUERY OPTIONS NOW AVAILABLE IN LANE MAPS

We have completed some long-awaited enhancements to Lane Maps, RLID's interactive mapping application. Following are details of what is now available.

NEW LAYERS:

• 2004 Metro Color Photos: These 6" high resolution aerial photos provide very sharp detail for the Eugene-Springfield metro area. These photos roughly cover the area within the urban growth boundaries of Eugene & Springfield (with a little overlap into the surrounding area in some places). Unfortunately, we do not have high resolution photos for other areas of the county at this time.
• Measure 37 Claims: This layer shows all taxlots that currently have Measure 37 claims with Lane County.
• Lane County Commissioner Districts: This layer shows commissioner names for all 5 districts. Note that this layer is available at all scales, but if you have the full county map displayed on your screen, some name labels will not be visible until you zoom in further.
• Road Functional Class: This layer identifies major streets by "functional class". Open the legend in the layers menu to see the color coded symbols (to open a layer's legend, click on the "+" sign next to the layer name. Click it again to close the legend.)
• PLSS Township and Range: This layer displays a labeled township/range grid for the entire county.
• PLSS Sections: This layer displays a labeled section grid within the township/range grid.

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NEW FUNCTIONALITY:
We have added two new options for Map Tips that we think you will find useful. Previously, you have had one map tip option available ("Taxlots"), which displays a summary of taxlot data, i.e. site address, maplot #, owner name & address, account #, etc. The two new map tips allow you to see additional data at a glance:

• Taxlots (Districts): This map tip displays all district boundaries for any taxlot. Simply click on the map tips tool and choose this map tip option before hovering your cursor over your taxlot of interest.
• Taxlots (Improvements): This map tip displays data about improvement(s) on any taxlot. Again, choose this map tip option before hovering your cursor over your taxlot of interest.

Note that these new map tips go hand-in-hand with NEW QUERY OPTIONS. You will now notice that when you open the query screen, you have a choice of how to query for a property or properties. Choosing "Taxlots" will bring up the query screen that you are familiar with.

The other two options, "Taxlots by Districts" and "Taxlots by Improvements" provide the user with the ability to query by property characteristics as displayed in the corresponding map tips. For example, if the user chooses to use the "Taxlots by Improvements" query screen, she/he will be able to select properties on the map that fit specific improvement criteria, such as number of baths or bedrooms, total square footage, etc.

These two new query screens are especially useful for "subqueries", where the user first makes a spatial selection using selection tools, then uses one of these query options to "filter out" only properties within the spatial selection that meet specific criteria. Here's an example:

Let's say the user is interested in finding properties that fit specific building characteristics in a particular neighborhood. The selection tools may be used to first select the properties in that neighborhood (see screenshot, below)

The user would like to further refine this selection based on dwelling square footage. To select only those homes that are 3000 square foot or larger, the user may open the "Taxlots by Improvements" query screen and request only those properties where the "Totaled Finished SqFt" starts at 3000 (see screenshot below). Note that it is not necessary to specify an upper range in this case.

IMPORTANT: The user must change the "selection" type to "subselect" for this query to work properly with the existing spatial selection. Otherwise, if the selection type is "New" (the default), Lane Maps will attempt to display all homes in the entire county that are 3000 sq. ft. or larger, and it will crash! See below:

The results on the screen show a new "sub-selection" of only those homes in the user specified geographic area that meet the additional criteria of 3000 square foot or larger. (see screenshot below)

Note that the user could subselect again if, for example, she/he wanted to now only select those properties that were 3000 sq. ft. or larger AND were built after 1980. The above steps would be repeated, with the additional subselect criteria of "Year Built" range start of 1980. The map would then show even fewer properties selected.

Also note that the tabular results will display the improvement characteristics in addition to the site address and owner name and address. These "improvement" results can be exported to Excel or saved as a pdf document or text file.

Experiment with these new features and let us know what you think! Lane Maps is a work in progress, and, as always, we welcome your input!