I was wondering what format the digital maps are in when purchased from ordanance survey or multimaps.

I would really like to get a really big section of map printed to stick on a wall, I can print it as we have a large format vinyl printer but I need the image in some sort of format that I can manipulate.

Cheers Bigsurfer

I know that Anquet (and therefore perhaps some of the rest) have OS licensing restrictions which prevent printing anything larger than A4.

Some copy shops will sell you sections for planning applications etc.
They come in various formats. Could be quite expensive though, depending on the extent required.

Would you not be better just buying one of the custom OS maps centred on a location of your choosing?

http://leisure.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/osselect/

What we do is:

1. Download the map from digimap.
2. Open in ArcGIS
3. Export to .ai
4. Manipulate in Illustrator

That probably isn't particularly useful as it involves using a few thousand pounds of software and licences.

Copyright on maps is very strict, which isn't surprising given the amount of work which goes into making them.

What do you want to use it for? Would simply buying the maps and taping them together work?

Copyright on maps is very strict, which isn't surprising given the amount of work which goes into making them.

Which the great tax paying public pays for.

Anyway…..

Do you need OS or just a big map?

You can get big maps based on the OpenStreetMap data for free.

Read http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/22/how-do-i-export-map-images-of-larger-areas

Which the great tax paying public pays for.

Which is why OS were successfully petitioned to release map data for free. Google " OS OpenData".

Indeed, http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/

In fact that might be just the job.

That's why UK Map on the iPhone is so good. £4.99 for the basic app, then as much 1:25 and 1:10k mapping as you want for free. Brilliant. I must admit I'd wondered about how you could print off large areas for sticking up on a wall.

Just grab some tiles off the internet and stitch them together – OS Getamap specifically allows this in its licensing, hence there are some programs floating around the net to make maps from that data. You can then make the map as big as you want – I'm assuming you can cope with very large image files and printing png/gif?

Re: Map copyright. I wish the Aussies paid for an OS with tax. The maps here are at best poor, and at worst, non-existent…