Start Location KMZ

[jman12101978]

Gentlemen,

I have to say first I've looked at some of the other posts that speak
to start location and as I've learned a few things I don't know how to
fix my problem. I'm a closet KML guy, I do this in my spare time for
small work projects and customers. Maybe my company will someday see
value and hire a real programmer and take this mainstream.

Problem.
Created 7 different KML files for different sites and links
(replication). Created a GE folder and put them all in it. Right-
clicked and "Save Place As", and i let me create a single KMZ file.
Awesome i thought because it's small and mobile so I can give out to
people. However when double-clicking the KMZ to open in GE it flies
me to somewhere off the coast of Spain? None of the KML's do that
individually, and my start location set in GE is center of the US. I
have no idea how to edit the KMZ or know why it's choosing that
location. None of my plotted points in any of the KML files are
international so I have no idea why?

[jmatthews]

Are you sure you're not missing a set of coordinates for some point in
your data set? Just wondering because, if you actually landing off
the West Coast of Africa, then, the start coordinate you are seeing is
0,0.

Other than that, you can hard-code a LookAt in the kml. See the kml
reference for LookAt if you think this will work.

[jman12101978]

I suppose I could be missing a set somewhere it's like 80 sites plus
80 replication links. However if I open each KML one at a time they
don't go off flying away. Only as a KMZ all the sudden I'm in the
ocean. If I were to want to try your idea with the LookAt should I
encode that in all the KML's then create the KMZ?

[mamun]

hi,
actually the kmz file is the zipped format of kml. so, if you want to
edit the kmz, then just unzip it then edit the kml and zip it again.
this way you can edit the kmz manually.

i am not sure what happened with your kmz, you better unzip it and
check the kml in kmz, it may help you to find out the problem easily.

hope this will help you.

------ mamun.

[jmatthews]

That's true (the preceding post).

I would think it is possible that when you save multiple kml's as a
single kmz, GE is making some assumption (or failing to make some
assumption) as to where to set the initial "LookAt." You can try
setting the lookAt the same in all your kml's and then save as kmz and
see what happens, but the same problem might occur.

Your better bet, if there is no reason not to, would be to combine all
your kml's into one kml and deal with it, rather than dealing with 7
kml's and combining them.

You would then have 1 niced, portable kml as well.

Many people use languages like php to actually write their kml code
for them. You could do that, too, if there is any convenience in that
for you. It is very easy because kml is very simple, despite the
learning curve and a few limitations in its features.