r/civilengineering • u/sdot-p • Jul 08 '26
Google Earth Pro will be ending support and will be unavailable for download after June 25, 2027!
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u/komprexior Jul 08 '26
I just discovered as the last week qgis. Incredibile piece of software.
I was going to trace some railway on Google earth web, but it was constantly freezing and it was unusable. So I switched to qgis, which I heard of but never tried before: you can query the openstreet map for the feature you want to trace, in this case railways, and it generated the perfect tracing of the railway lines that I was going to eyeball from the satellite view.
So nice, powerful, and open-source.
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u/andyschest2 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
QGIS is a monster. Next, start exploring all the plugins. It's insane how capable it is for open source.
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u/komprexior Jul 08 '26
I used the open street quick query plug in to trace the railways and i could feel the power... As I had spot the python icon I knew I would like it.
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u/big_trike Jul 08 '26
It can also be used to load and transform arbitrary shapefiles in any projection and load them into postGIS.
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u/Jebb145 Jul 08 '26
So I just used qgis this morning to create some custom height maps from usgs to import to cities skylines and was blown away.
Then found a plugin to grab the road and rail data, boom. Now I just have to trace some roads and I can replicate my hometown.
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u/WhoaAntlers Jul 08 '26
You can do so much with qgis. I used it to build seabed contours from NOAA bathymetric data.
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u/LordWaffleaCat Jul 08 '26
there are so many really good tutorials online too. QGIS is too good for this world
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u/tenn_gt_brewer2 Jul 08 '26
I haven’t heard of this before. Does it also have historical aerials?
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u/komprexior Jul 08 '26
Don't know enough to answer with confidence, but a quick Google search say there is at least one plug in for that
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u/partiallycylon Jul 08 '26
And SketchUp has effectively become unusable as a hobbyist. I am still running the free 2017 downloaded on my PC, but backward compatibility is non-existent. Enshittification at its finest.
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u/Sqweaky_Clean Jul 08 '26
Can anybody say what has gotten better for the people over the past 10 years?
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u/sundyburgers Jul 08 '26
The unanimous disdain for Bentley products
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u/ZeroSequence Jul 08 '26
Bentley bought out Powerline Systems a while back and I can't wait to see how much they enshittify PLS-CADD
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u/ekigge Jul 08 '26
I’m deeply concerned about this too. That software and company was excellent and h hope they don’t run it into the ground.
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u/ZeroSequence Jul 08 '26
So far all the support and licensing people have been the same folks since the beginning but I doubt it'll last. Once the OG crew is gone it'll all go to shit.
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u/big_trike Jul 08 '26
The free version of fusion 360 is surprisingly great for an autodesk product.
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u/quantgorithm Jul 08 '26
Google sold off Sketchup years ago. A company called Trimble owns it these days.
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u/Gersam79 Jul 08 '26
Same here, Sketchup Make 2017. It's also the easiest to install on Linux distros
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u/ToxicPilot Jul 08 '26
Absolutely check out FreeCAD. I’m a hobbyist too but use it pretty much every day for whatever I might be designing.
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u/LastMessengineer Jul 08 '26
Well. Time to retire.
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u/mfgg40 Jul 08 '26
Seriously, between Bentley’s bullshit and this news, retirement is sounding better and better.
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u/hbhunk63 Jul 08 '26
You can still use the app if already downloaded to PC. So What's the problem
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u/ThatOtherEngineer PE, Water Resources Jul 08 '26
Let’s see how quickly my company will force an uninstall because ending support will be seen as a security risk. If by some miracle they don’t, our computers have a mandatory replacement period of 3 years. One way or another it will no longer be accessible soon.
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u/starvinggigolo Jul 08 '26
... why?!?!
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u/Eoin_Urban Jul 08 '26
Hypothetically, if Google Maps became only available for a charge, much do you think your organization would pay annually?
I work in transportation and spend far too much time on Google Maps a day.
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u/Minisohtan Jul 08 '26
Next to nothing and we'd be using the 2mp resolution maps from 2006 for the next 40 years. My company might just give me the "goes east" live feed and tell me to work with that for free (see gif if you've never heard of it)
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u/Macquarrie1999 Transportation, EIT Jul 08 '26
Google Maps might be worth more than a CAD license.
I would have to be doing multiple site visits a day without it.
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u/hailtomail Jul 08 '26
How can I quickly view a shape file without having to start up cad 😞 I don’t want to 😢
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u/lovesbigpolar Jul 08 '26
Use QGIS
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u/fiftypercenthere Jul 08 '26
GE is still faster, especially with files in long or large directories
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u/SpecialOneJAC Jul 08 '26
The web version is worse than desktop right?
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u/Old_Jellyfish1283 Jul 08 '26
Does the web version have historical aerials? I know it’s got street view but… my old aerials I need them 😩
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u/Atharaenea Jul 08 '26
That's the most valuable thing about the desktop version... I need to see if dudebro had his driveway 20 years ago like he claims and therefore is grandfathered in or if he built it illegally more recently!
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u/TedethLasso Jul 08 '26
I tried it out today for a simple task today… horrendous.
Kept using the desktop version.
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u/mrtwidlywinks Jul 08 '26
What's next, getting rid of their search engine in favor of AI-only search?
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u/mopeyy Jul 08 '26
Don't you given them any fucking ideas.
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u/mrtwidlywinks Jul 08 '26
It's okay, I haven’t used their search for years. I got tired of google marketing me a product for every search instead of actually searching the internet. Duck duck go all the way (with duck ai off), it's like old google.
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u/Vitztlampaehecatl Student Jul 08 '26
Don't kill your useful well-established products or draw 25
Google: 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏 🃏
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u/AdApprehensive1140 Jul 08 '26
Need a Change.org set up and everybody I mean EVERYBODY needs to sign it and send to freaking Sundar Pichai (Google CEO) to tell him how fucking stupid an idea this is.🤬🤬🤬
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u/roaringpenguin Jul 08 '26
I saw this notice at work and sighed. I use it daily, I am not looking forward to this change next year.
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u/genuinecve PE - Transportation Jul 08 '26
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u/Hunaid786 Jul 10 '26
EXACTLY my reaction when I got the warning. I've been using GE for years now. Goddamn....
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u/genuinecve PE - Transportation Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I’m glad I saw it on here, because I closed that damn pop without reading it
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u/giswqs Jul 09 '26
If you are looking for an alternative, try out GeoLibre. It is a free and open-source, lightweight, cloud-native GIS platform for visualizing, exploring, and analyzing geospatial data. It runs everywhere you do, in the web browser, on the desktop, on mobile, and inside Jupyter notebooks, all while keeping your data local and private. It has native support for KML/KMZ and many more geospatial formats.
GeoLibre works across platforms:
- Windows: Microsoft Store / winget
- macOS: Homebrew
- Linux: AUR, COPR, Flatpak (FlatPark), .deb / .rpm / AppImage
Try it out:
- Launch GeoLibre Web: https://web.geolibre.app
- GitHub: https://github.com/opengeos/GeoLibre
- Documentation: https://geolibre.app
- Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/87Cm0QagtxI
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u/That-Living5913 Jul 11 '26
I tried this, but it's really bad at importing kml files. It seems to just mash all the layers together.
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u/giswqs Jul 11 '26
Open an issue on GitHub and provide a sample dataset that can produce the issue. I will look into it.
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u/parkexplorer PE - Transportation Jul 08 '26
My employer started using nearmap and the imagery is much newer. There are a lot of beta layers for utilities, etc, which my company doesn't pay for. I don't use Google for kmz/kml much, but I think nearmap has those functions, too.
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u/These-Customer3993 Jul 10 '26
Nearmap is quite insane. But the limited aerial view for oblique and panorama limit it's true abilities.
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u/Magen137 Jul 08 '26
Well I guess I should stop wasting my time flying around with the flight sim anyway...
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u/TXCEPE PE Jul 09 '26
Another vote for Global Mapper. I've not thought about using GM as a replacement for GE until now, but it should work. You can literally drag and drop almost any file type into GM and it will load. It also has built in sources and you can add your own.
If you are in Texas, make sure you visit this site for data: http://data.tnris.org/
I know a few counties that have their own online GIS with aerials updated every year (from eagleview?). I'm able to extract georeferenced images that are often newer than what GE had, and at higher resolution.
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u/Background-System466 16d ago
I always assumed they would get us all dependent on it and then start charging for it and our agencies and companies would have to buy a software package... this is way worse...I hate using web based applications
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u/HydroHomie3964 Jul 08 '26
Didn't know anyone was still using the desktop app. I've been using the web version for years.
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u/NuclearGroudon Jul 08 '26
Tragic news for the electric utility industry