GIS (Geographic Information System) solvers integrate external geographic and geospatial data sources to provide location-specific engineering parameters for calculations.

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Available GIS Solvers

Orography Solver

Analyzes topographic features around a site for wind loading calculations

Roughness Point Solver

Determines terrain roughness characteristics for wind analysis

USGS API Solver

Retrieves seismic design parameters from USGS web services

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Common Features

All GIS solvers share these characteristics:
  • Location-based: Use latitude and longitude coordinates to fetch location-specific data
  • External APIs: Connect to third-party services for authoritative data
  • Error handling: Gracefully handle API failures with fallback values
  • Unit awareness: Return properly formatted engineering units

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Integration with Templates

GIS solvers are typically implemented as remote widgets in templates: 
{
    "type": "sheetTemplateWidgets",
    "attributes": {
        "type": "remote",
        "solver": "gisOrography",
        "equation": [
            {
                "condition": "@default",
                "result": "{
                    latitude: projectDefault(\"latitude\", 40.7128) deg,
                    longitude: projectDefault(\"longitude\", -74.0060) deg,
                    z: building_height,
                    numSectors: 12
                }"
            }
        ],
        "referenceId": "orography_data"
    }
}
GIS solvers require internet connectivity and may experience temporary outages from external services. Always implement appropriate fallback mechanisms in your templates.