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The MIT campus map suite is a set of programs and images that provide a searchable, graphic view of MIT and a set of downloadable, editable images for including the MIT map in your own electronic and paper publications. The system uses official MIT maps from the MIT Planning Office.

Printing the Maps | Searching and Navigating | Using Maps in Your Pages

The map images were created by the MIT Planning Office using AutoCAD software. Then, through a series of magical machinations with Freehand and Debabelizer, they became a set of GIF images. Illustrator and Photoshop were also used to process the images.

The campus map programs were written in C and PERL. They run on a SUN workstation (we tested them on an SGI and it worked fine there too). The campus map programs make extensive use of the gd library for manipulating GIF images. FileMaker Pro was used to generate all of the data files.

The campus map suite was made possible by the joint effort of the following people:

• Suzana Lisanti - IS Campus-Wide Information Systems (CWIS)
• Aneel Nazareth - C programmer and GIFmeister (CWIS team)
• Matthew Wall - PERL hacks and system integration (hired gun)
• Debi Fuchs - IS FileMaker Consultant
• Michael Owu - Planning Office
• John Bidwell - Office for Facilities Management System
• Gregory Knight - MIT Physical Plant

The map has two means of interaction: navigation and search. There are four navigational states and three search methods.

Navigation. Click anywhere on the map to zoom in. Once you have zoomed in, a small locator map appears. Clicking on the locator map will pan the view in the larger map to a region centered at your click location. Clicking on the larger map will zoom in. The four navigational states correspond to three levels of zoom and a panoramic view of the campus at the medium zoom level. At the most zoomed out level (resolution 1), the entire campus is visible. The most-zoomed-in level (resolution 3) shows single buildings (or clusters of small buildings). When you zoom in as far as you can, your clicks will be interpreted and the system will find the feature nearest to your click. The result will be a page of information about the feature closest to where you clicked. For example, if you click on the student center, you will find a list of the many student offices and services found in that building.

Clicks in the large map zoom in, clicks in the smaller map pan. Use the dome pictures to zoom in and out, or to get to the panoramic view of the entire campus. Use the arrows to pan by small amounts.

Items selected from the lists will be highlighted on the map, and the map will pan and zoom to the size required to show the item(s) you have selected.

Searching. There are three ways to locate an item on the MIT campus: by selecting from category lists, by entering keywords, or by selecting from a list of icon sets. Your query will generate a map that includes as many of the requested features as possible. The items that are found will be highlighted. The keyword searches are case insensitive. No regular expressions are available at this time.

The campus map copyright is owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights are reserved. The campus map images, source code, and documentation are not in the public domain. Permission is granted for personal (not-for-profit) use of the campus map images listed below. In addition, MIT constituents may use these images (or derivatives thereof) for any MIT publications. Please see the copyright notice for details.

MIT organizations only:   To obtain a customized version of this map for your organization, please contact the MIT Publishing Services Bureau at psb@mit.edu.

If you need a one-page map of MIT, use this PDF file (389 K).

If you would like a copy of the campus map from which to derive your own map, then use one of the following sources. The campus map is available labelled (including building numbers and street names) and unlabelled in the following formats:

These files are color and grayscale maps of the entire MIT campus. The labelled images include building numbers and street names. We suggest using the PostScript (EPS) version for paper publications, and the GIF version for electronic publications. Either may be edited should you desire only a part of the campus or if you want to overlay your own graphics or text on the map.

The EPS versions are scalable, so you can resize them without losing image quality. The EPS versions are layered, so if you open them in an intelligent program such as Illustrator, you will be able to add and remove layers. If you open them in less-intelligent programs, you will see only a gray box (they do not contain a preview).

The GIF, PICT, and TIFF versions are all rasterized. You can scale them, but doing so may result in jagged (aliased) edges.

You can use the campus map system to create custom maps with your own highlights, overlays, and/or sections of campus. In addition, you can create maps that are linked to the rest of the campus map system. You might want to look at the examples to see what else can be done with the campus map suite.

Static Map Images

The easiest way to get the map section you want is to use the WWW interface at http://whereis.mit.edu/ Once you have the image you would like to use in your pages, use your browser to save the actual image or the reference to the image. This is done by holding the mouse button down over the image until a menu pops up, or by clicking on the image with the right mouse button. Save the image by choosing the 'Save this image as...' option, or save the URL to the image by choosing the 'Save this image location' option. Alternatively, you may view the html source and copy the part that specifies the map section that you want.

Note that when you use the campus map in your WWW pages, you can copy either the image itself or the html used to reference the image. If you make your own copy of the image, your page may probably load faster. However, if the campus map changes, your copy of the map will not be updated to reflect the modifications.

Overlaying GIF Images

There are two ways to overlay GIF images on the map: pinpoints (single images) or pinsets (groups of images).

To place a single GIF image, use the pinpoint argument to either the map or the mapimg program. The pinpoint argument expects the full path to a the GIF image that you want to overlay. You should also use the pg.x and pg.y arguments to specify the global x and y coordinates (or pl.x and pl.y to specify the coordinates with respect to the selected map section).

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?pinpoint=dot-red.gif&pg.x=100&pg.y=300

There are some GIF images available for you to use in http://whereis.mit.edu/pinpoints

If you prefer, you may use the pinset argument to map or mapimg to specify a file that contains a list of multiple images to overlay onto your map. This will be useful if you have many images or if you want to keep the URL simple. The pinset argument expects a full path to a text file that lists images followed by the coordinates at which each image should be placed. The coordinates are defined with respect to the largest campus map (resolution 3).

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?pinset=atm.dat

There are some pinsets defined for you to use in http://whereis.mit.edu/pinsets

The format of the pinset data file is defined in the file formats page at http://whereis.mit.edu/doc/file-formats.html#pinset.dat

Inserting HTML into the Campus Map

If you would like the map program to return an index, legend, or other custom HTML within its normal output, then use the file argument. This argument expects the full path to a file that contains the HTML fragment that will appear within the pages returned by the map program.

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?file=/afs/athena/dept/libraries/www/section.html

For example, see the MIT Libraries' locations page at http://libraries.mit.edu/map.html

Drawing Lines

Use the lbl.x,lbl.y arguments to specify the beginning points in local coordinates. Use the lel.x,lel.y arguments to specify the ending points in local coordinates. Use the lbg.x,blg.y arguments to specify the beginning points in global coordinates. Use the leg.x,leg.y arguments to specify the ending points in global coordinates.

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/mapimg?res=1&lbl.x=280&lbl.y=150&lel.x=350&lel.y=140

Locating Features

You can locate a building, classroom, or other feature using the locate command to. When you locate a feature or group of features, the campus map figures out the appropriate zoom level and size of map that will include all of the features that you specify. Note that mapimg does not highlight the features that have been located, but map does.

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?locate=bldg_3,bldg_10
http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/mapimg?locate=bldg_3&locate=bldg_10

A complete list of features is located at http://whereis.mit.edu/config/features.dat

Highlighting Features

If you have a map section that you like and simply want to highlight a feature in that section, then use the hi argument to either map or mapimg.

http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?hi=bldg_3,bldg_10
http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/mapimg?locate=bldg_3&hi=bldg_3&hi=bldg_10

A complete list of features is located at http://whereis.mit.edu/config/features.dat

More Information...

There are two programs that do most of the work in the campus map suite: map and mapimg. These programs live on the campus map web server. You do not need to download them; simply call them from within your html documents. The file formats used by the campus map suite are available. Complete developer documentation is at http://whereis.mit.edu/doc/documentation.html

The map program returns a portion of the campus map with the navigation and search interfaces described earlier. The default way to invoke this program is http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map Documentation is at http://whereis.mit.edu/doc/map.html

The mapimg program returns a portion of the campus map as a GIF image. It can highlight buildings in arbitrary colors, draw lines, or overlay any GIF image onto the map section. It is called using standard CGI arguments, so it may be embedded in any html page. For a complete listing of the CGI arguments that mapimg understands, see http://whereis.mit.edu/doc/maplib-cgi.html The default way to invoke this program is http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/mapimg Documentation is at http://whereis.mit.edu/doc/mapimg.html