KML4Earth

Reference
© Copyright 2011 jasonm1

logo Create Big KML (Lots of placemarks)

Number of placemarks: (1 to 25000) [default=100]
Number of different icon styles: (1-25)
Timestamps: on off   *New Feature*
Distribution type: clustered (normal distribution)
perturbe longitude in cluster mode +/- 5 degrees (default)
global random distribution

This new KML Generator tool can help developers who need to quickly generate a bunch of randomly or psuedo-distributed placemarks. As a developer I sometimes need to generate a "large" number of placemarks so this tool fits that need. This tool generates KML within a KMZ wrapper to keep the download size small.

Note this website is a managed resource with pre-set quotas so at present the maximum number of generated placemarks is limited to 25,000 but this restriction could be lifted if there is demand.

I've generated half a million placemarks with this tool (no restriction) and Google Earth v6.1.0.5001 was quite sluggish with it (KML file size is ~67MB and the KMZ is just under 7MB). Loading 100K placemarks (13 MB KML file) had an initial startup delay in Google Earth and nothing displayed in first two minutes then the placemarks all become visible at once and it ran smoothly. Screenshot on left shows 100,000 placemarks as it appeared in Google Earth.

Scaling to many thousands of placemarks or larger can only be properly handled using a combination of NetworkLinks with Regions and/or time with smaller KML files. Sub-dividing content using NetworkLinks with Regions is basically how the Google Earth layers are implemented under the covers.

Feel free to let me know if additional features in this tool would be useful such as picking the starting location, larger range of symbols, etc.

Created and maintained by jasonm1