Instituto de energía solar

The Library of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid has made 4,150 vector maps, scale 1:25.000 available to the entire university community that make up the collection of topographical maps of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (National Geographical Institute) (IGN).

Access to the maps

There are several way of accessing the maps:

• Catalogue of the UPM library (searching for the title by name of municipality or in series by "Mapa Topográfico Nacional de España (National Topographical Map of Spain) 1:25.000")
• Alphabetical index of municipalities (in alphabetical order according to the most important city, town or village in the area corresponding to the 4,150 pages into which the map of Spain is divided.
• Searching for the page in one of the following maps of Spain: IGN1, IGN2, IGN3, IGN4, and, once it has been located, looking at the Index number (cities, towns or villages order by the page number to which the name corresponds)

For each of the pages there are two files, one of them details the altimetry and the other, the planimetry. The names of these files are defined by the page number of the MTN 1:50.000, with 4 digits (e.g. “0559”) and the quadrant corresponding to the MTN page 1:25.000 (e.g. “c1”). For example: “0559-1”, is quadrant 1 of page 559 of the MTN50. There are some special files, than include two of the MTN25 pages, of the same page of the MTN50 (e.g. “1093c3-4”) or of different pages (e.g.“1094c3-1093c4”).

Licence for use

The files are for the exclusive use in teaching or research by staff or students of the UPM and are only accessible from their network.

Visualization of the files

The files are in “*.dgn”, format version 7.1 from MicroStation, and in order to visualise them it is necessary to have the program installed in your computer. If you do not have this program you can download and save the file and open it in another computer with the program.

The files can be opened with the current version as well as previous versions. However in the case of the previous versions, (V.8 - XM) they can only be opened in read-only mode or updated to the new version. The free version, Bentley View which is installed in the computers in the libraries can be used, just for visualization. They can also be downloaded for their later transfer and used in GIS programs (for example ArcGIS for which the UPM has a campus licence) or AutoCAD.

The files, both the altimetry and planimetry, are 2D. The height of some elements (level curves, bathymetric curves, enclosed points, etc.) are stored in each element as a ”Graphic Group” number.

For the correct visualisation of the texts, it is necessary to download two “Bibliotecas de fuentes de textos” (Libraries of text font) archives: “BCN25-Fuentes-1.rsc” and “BCN25-Fuentes-2.rsc” (in order to download both files, click the right-hand button on the mouse and select the option "Guardar destino como..." (Save destination as ...). In order to do so, it is necessary to edit the configuration variable corresponding to the legend “MS_SYMBRSRC” resources: Click on the menu “Espacio de trabajo” (workspace), option “Configuración” (Configuration) and the column “Categoría” (Category), select “Simbología” (Legend), and then click “Seleccionar” (Select), then look for the two aforementioned files and add them to the list of legend resources. Click “OK”, as many times as necessary to exit the editing window of the configuration variables, saving the changes. In order for these changes to become effective, it will be necessary to close the file and open it again. Thus, from then on, whenever the storage directories of the two “*.rsc” files are not changed when the files of the pages are opened, the texts will be seen correctly.

On opening the files, the colours will be seen correctly, given that the graphic elements appear in the colours used in their creation. If this does not happen, the “BCN25-Tabla-color.tbl” “colour table”: must be used (in order to download the file, click the right-hand button of the mouse and select the option "Guardar destino como...") (Save destination as ...). In order to do so, click “Ajustes” (Adjustments), option “Colour table” and in the visualization window of the colour table, in the menu “Archivo” (File), click “Abrir” (Open) and look for the colour table indicated, load it and then click “Vincular” (Link), on the lower part of the visualization window of the colour table.

The files can be prepared so that they can be seen as a complete page when you open them by adjusting the screen “ajustada la vista” and using “atributos de vista” (attributes of the screen) defined for a correct visualization of each file.

Detailed information on the information contained in each file and how it is structured, can be found in the "BCN25.doc” file.