Google Earth User Guide - Manual (Page 106)

properly grouped in the Places listing.
Note: You can only define a single subfolder option for either color or icon display.
❍
Icon adjustments to single buckets - You can modify each icon element individually by clicking on it and
adjusting the icon for that particular value or value range.
❍
In addition, you can modify the settings for numeric buckets to adjust the spread of the data to your preference.
See
Customizing the Value Range for Numeric Data to learn how to adjust the numeric ranges once you
choose the number of buckets for a range of numbers.
6. Click OK to apply and view your changes.
7. Save the style template. You can always edit the template to apply icon and height styles or to make additional color
adjustments. Do this by following the instructions in Applying a Style Template .
Mapping Height Values
By default, no height values are defined initially in the Height tab. Use the Height tab in the Style Template Settings dialog box
to set height values from a selected field. Once height values are activated, points, lines, or shapes are extruded from ground
level to the height defined for each data element. If you map height to lines or shapes, the values you define work in
combination with the colors defined in the Color tab.
On the other hand, if you map height to point data, those points are extruded using a single pixel colored line to connect the
icon from its elevated position to the ground. You can use style settings to modify the width and color of those lines if you wish.
The rest of this section covers details for using height values effectively, including:
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Height Values for Text Fields
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Height Values for Numeric Fields
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Using Style Settings to Modify Point Display
Height Values for Text Fields
The height map settings for text fields differ from those for numeric fields. If the field you choose to map contains text data,
the first 8 unique fields are each defined in their own container, or bucket. For this reason, it makes sense to only map height
values to a field that has 8 or fewer unique values. See
Choosing Field Types for Style Mapping for more details.
When you map height values to a text field, the following settings are available:
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Individual height values - The height mapping wizard automatically calculates reasonable height values for your data
given its geographical extents. For example, for points clustered around a small region, 20 - 2000 meters might be
adequate to view all points as elevated when looking at the entire set in the 3D viewer. On the other hand, if your data
set encompasses an entire state, higher values are calculated so that height is apparent when looking over the entire
region in the 3D viewer.
You can always modify the height values by hand to adjust each point to your preference. In general, the greater the
distinction between each point, the easier it is to visualize that distinction in the 3D viewer from a distance. Height
units - By default, height units are set to meters, but you can change them to feet if you prefer. When you change the
default value from meters to feet, you might want to adjust the values in each bucket upward to make the data visible
in the 3D viewer.
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Scaling factor - Use the Scaling factor slider to uniformly adjust the numeric values in all height fields. The slider
provides a general factor from .1 times the value to 10 times the value defined in each field. If you manually adjust the
height values, you can also use the Scaling factor slider to make further adjustments to those numbers.
Height Values for Numeric Fields
When you map height values to a numeric field in your data, you can choose from two types of mapping methods: continuous
or split into buckets .
Using Continuous Mapping
The continuous mapping method uses the minimum and maximum values of your selected field to determine a minimum and