User guide Introduction ByMapSelf is not a BI tool by itself: it is a software that will help you create the shapes you need to display your data in Microsoft Power BI or Microsoft Reporting Services. Most of the time, you will easily find the shapes over the internet, if you are dealing with official geographic elements such as countries, regions or counties. ByMapSelf is there in all the other cases: you will draw the shapes from scratch with your mouse.

ByMapSelf user interface

ByMapSelf is composed of 4 zones:

1. Drawing area The drawing area is obviously the area where you will draw the shapes and where all the created elements will be displayed. The areas dimensions are 10,000 by 10,000 pixels. Use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. You can navigate in the area: -

Using the “scroll background” mode

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By keeping pressed the left Shift key of your keyboard.

2. Mode selection buttons There are 2 main modes in ByMapSelf: “Creation” and “Edition” -

Creation: To create new elements

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Edition: to modify an existing element

Note that you can switch from Creation mode to Edition mode by pressing the “e” key of the keyboard. A third button, “Scroll background” is not really a mode. When you click on the button it temporally deactivates the Creation (or Edition) mode, so that you can scroll the Drawing area. Scrolling the area is achieved by keeping the left button of the mouse pressed while you move the cursor. To leave the “scroll background” mode, click again on the “scroll background” button.

3. Dynamic are depending on the selected mode -

When you are in creation mode or when you are adding an island or a lake to an existing element, choose whether you want to draw point by point or continuously by clicking on these buttons

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Remove last point. This button appears when you are drawing a new element. Clicking on this button is equivalent to use the shortcut CTRL+Z

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In creation mode, you can select the layer on which the element will be created:

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In edition mode, you can change the id or the name of an element. You can also change the layer.

4. Elements list In this area are listed the elements created so far. You can select an element by clicking on its name in the list. It will highlight it on the drawing area. You can choose to display layers in the Displayed layer checkboxes list. Elements belonging to hidden layers will appear in grey in the list, but they still can be selected.

The order of layers determines which elements will be selected when you click on the drawing area in case there would be overlapping shapes. This order can be changed by using the arrows

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Creation mode The creation mode is used to create new elements. An element is composed of at least one polygon. Adding a new polygon (an island for example) or a hole (a lake for example) to an element will be done in Edition mode. Creation mode is only for new elements. Always draw your element clock-wise, it will allow you to use existing elements borders as border for your new element.s

1. The first thing to do before creating a new element is to choose the layer it will belong to. This is done by picking out one layer in the list

2. To create a new element you have to draw a starting point (or select an existing point) a. To draw a new point, click somewhere in the background. A green point will be created

b. If you want to choose an existing point as a starting point for the new element, click on an existing element to highlight its points.

Then move the cursor to highlight a point You can zoom in (using the mouse wheel) it is difficult to select the point:

Then click on the point. It turns green to indicate that the starting point for the new element is created.

3. Add points to the polygon you are creating, by creating new points or selecting existing ones as explained in step 2. You can choose the “point by point” method or the “continuous drawing” by clicking on these buttons (pressing the space key will switch from one method to the other):

Note that in continuous mode you can also draw point by point if you release the left mouse button. The polygon being created is displayed in grey, delimited by red points. To remove the last drawn points, use CTRL+Z shortcut once ore repeatedly, or click on “Remove last point” button:

If you want to use an existing element’s border in your new element, to avoid gaps on the final map:

a. Draw the current shape by moving next to the existing element:

b. Then click on the existing element to highlight its points, and click on the first point you want to use in the new element.

c. Select the last point of the existing element you want to add to the new element

d. ByMapSelf automatically selects all the points between the first point selected and the last point selected. This is done by parsing the existing element anti clockwise (which is the explanation why it’s important to draw the shapes clockwise)

Points are not duplicated during this process: if you move a point in the Edition mode, both elements will be impacted.

4. In order to finish the element, move the cursor over the starting point until it changes to the following:

5. Click on the starting point and rename the element

Edition mode In Edition mode you can:

1. Move points Select an element by clicking on it in the Drawing area, or by clicking on its name in the elements list. The element’s points will be highlighted. Move the cursor over a point and move it by drag and drop:

2. Change the element properties

The element name and the layer are meaningful only in ByMapSelf. This is not the case for the Element Id which will be the link between the elements and you data in the BI visualization tool. For your information see the “Exporting maps” section of this document

3. Add an island to an existing element Click on this icon in the list of elements, next to the element you want to add a polygon to.

You can the draw the new polygon the same way new elements are created (see the “Creation mode” section)

4. Add a hole to an existing element Click on this icon in the list of elements, next to the element you want to add a hole to.

Then draw the hole in the element

Layers Layers are not mandatory. They exist only to make it easier for you if you want to hide elements during the map drawing. Their behavior has already been described in the “ByMapSelf User Interface” section. Note that the layer an element belongs to has minimal impact when you export the map. See the “Exporting map” section of the document for more information.

Backgrounds It may be difficult to draw a map with free hand drawing on a white background. ByMapSelf allows you to load images in the background, so that you just can draw by following borders, highways.

1. Load background from image To do so, select the “Load background from image” option in the menu

Browse for the image on your computer or on your company’s network. Once the image is selected, the adjustments window pops up. You can adjust the image size and its position as a background. It’s often necessary if there are already shapes drawn on the drawing area.

Adjust the size of the image with the slider, and user +/- keys for small adjustments. Drag and drop the blue area to adjust the position of the image. Use the arrows on your keyboard for small adjustments. If you need to close the window because you need to scroll or zoom in the drawing area, that’s ok. You will see below how to reopen the adjustment window The images you load are added in the menu. This is how you can select them (only one background at a time is active, rename them, open the “adjustments window” or delete them if you do not need them anymore.

Images are embedded in the ByMapSelf file. So you can send your work to someone else without having to send the backgrounds. Background images have no impact on the exported maps. They are here only to help you during the drawing.

2. Load background from the internet

In case you want to use your favorite map service on the internet, there is no need to make screenshots from your web browser, then save them as images, and then load them following the method described above! Select the ““Load background from web” in the menu

The first time you use this feature, ByMapSelf will ask you the URL you want to use. (by example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/48.8867/2.2421) It will be then saved as a preference for the next times.

Once you click ok, ByMapSelf is in “Web browser mode”.

You can now navigate in the browser and save as many images as you want by clicking the “Save as background” button: it captures the web browser content as an image. Once it’s done, you have to click on the “Close web browser” button to exit this mode.

All the images you have saved are now available in the menu, as if you had loaded them manually from external files. You can rename them if needed.

Exporting maps To export the map, choose one of the options in the menu

1. Export as topojson Exporting as topojson will create a json file you can use in Power BI, looking like the following:

It contains the Id and the name defined in Edition mode

Let’s assume you have in Power BI: Table Geo

Table Data

Model

Display the data as a shape map using the exported json will result in the following:

Note that Power BI uses all the json properties to match with the geographical dimension (“Allemagne” data is correctly displayed on the map, even if the id entered in ByMapSelf doesn’t match). An example of Power BI desktop file is available in the download section of the forum)

Note that you have to enable the shape map visual first in Power BI options:

2. Export as Sql Exporting as Sql will produce the following file:

You can modify it to match your needs. Note that contrary to Power BI you may need to adjust the Id properly to facilitate the table usage in your queries. Querying your table in SSMS will give you the following result:

You can then use the ByMapSelfGeo table in your SSRS dataset, in order to display your data using the Map report element:

General advises 1. Elements cannot be moved once they are created. Therefore it’s important before starting drawing the first shape to ensure that you will be able to draw the most northwest element. It’s even more true if you want to use several backgrounds: always start with the top-left corner

2. You cannot rename or remove a layer. If you want to use several layers, create them before starting drawing the first shape, otherwise a default layer name “element” will be created.