Tony Moss, Luke Coletti, et al Concerning my quest for an outdoor globe:
It appears that I will have to make them myself if I want one. I don't know if I will have the skills to get it done. I have settled on an 8" diameter globe made of brass colored anodized aluminum with black outlines of countries, lines of longitude and lattitude, and some city names. My search for a digital version of "gores" has turned up MAC and UNIX based systems and programs. The one that seems the most promising is a program called Geocart ($500) for the MAC. But, I do not have access to a MAC. A guy from TerraData generated two files for me that are the output from Geocart that are suppose to be in Adobe Ilustrator format. However, none of my CAD or drawing programs can import them. The files are called ATT00018.DAT and GORES.SEA. Do they sound like MAC files? If they are, could someone read them for me, (and hope again hope) translate them to a PC based format. I have talked to globe makers about their images and have gotten quotes up to $30,000. They say there is considerable tweaking of the image that must be done depending on the properties of the material used for the globes, and how it streches. The next steps in the project are: . Decide if gores or rosettes are the proper shape. . Develop some way to form the metal and attach it to the core. . Make some gores or rosettes in metal to determine the streching properties of the metal, and tweak the shape of the image if needed. . Find a source of 8" hard plastic balls to use as a core for the globes. Any help in this project would be greatly appreciated. ++ron
