Site GIS overview

Map a US building site from public data, outline it, look up its facts, and take it out as drawings, images or a site sheet.

Alpha tool. It's early and still changing: expect things to break, and keep your own copy of anything you can't lose. What alpha means

Site GIS maps a building site from public US data: aerial imagery, USGS topo, FEMA flood zones, wetlands, county and city lines, terrain, soils, seismic design values and National Register historic places. You find the site, outline its boundary, look up what's public about the ground, and export drawings, images or a printed site-analysis sheet.

One saved document is one site.

Everything the map shows comes from the public services each time you open the site. Your browser asks those services directly, only while a layer or lookup is on. What the site keeps is your own work: the boundary, setbacks, measurements, notes, and the dated results of your last lookups.

The main screen #

From top to bottom:

The toolbar. Project ▾ on the left, then the site's name (click it to rename), an Alpha tag, and a status message when something happens. On the right: Sheet, New, Import, Export ▾, and Share / Snapshots last.
The map, on the left. It starts zoomed out on the US until you find a place. A scale bar sits in the bottom-left corner.
The panel, on the right. Its sections run top to bottom: Find a place, Site boundary, Buildable area, Measure, Layers, Site facts, Soils, Seismic design values, Historic places, Terrain, Export settings, Figures for the project and Notes.

Click Sheet to swap the map for the printable site sheet. Click Map to go back. See Export and print.

On a phone, the map sits on top and the panel follows below it. Scroll down for the panel.

Start a new site #

Site GIS isn't on the project page's + New menu yet. Start a site in the tool, then file it in a project.

Click New. If the current site has a place or a boundary, confirm that you want to start over.
Under Find a place, type an address, a city, or coordinates as lat, lon, and click Find. If more than one place matches, pick one from the list.
Or click the map to drop the site pin there.

A search names an untitled site after the place. Type over the name any time.

Then outline the site. See Boundary, setbacks and measuring.

Put it in a project #

A new site lives only on this computer until you push it into a project.

Open Project ▾.
Click Push to a project….
Pick a project, or make a new one.

Once it's in a project, it saves as you work. Project ▾ also has Save a new cloud version, and two ways to take a site back out: Pull out — keep the project's copy and Pull out — remove from the project. See Projects and schemes and Saving and versions.

To keep a site off the cloud entirely, see Local only.

Open existing work #

From your projects. Open Project ▾. Below the project actions, it lists the sites saved in your projects (and in projects shared with you). Click one to open it.
From a site file. Click Import in the toolbar and pick a .gis.json file you saved with Export ▾ → Site file (.json). It replaces the site on this computer.

Opening another site starts it fresh: contours, soil shapes and other map data load again from the public services.

Who can see a site #

A site in a project is shared with the people on that project, with their roles. Viewers can look and export pictures, but can't change anything. See People and roles.

You can take snapshots of a site. View-only links aren't available for Site GIS yet.

Without signing in #

Signed out, or without tool access, Site GIS opens a demo site: a made-up project on a public park block. Layers, the click readout, contours, setbacks and measuring work on it. Your own sites, boundaries and downloads need you signed in.

AI connector #

An AI assistant connected through the AI connector can read a site (its boundary, setbacks, notes and the last lookups) but can't change it.