[GRASSLIST:5979] Re: a little help for a new user?

[Richard Greenwood]

At 09:15 PM 4/8/2003 -0400, you wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I just downloaded the spearfish data set from 
>http://grass.baylor.edu/sampledata/spearfish_grass5data.tar.gz, and I have 
>a few questions.  When I start up GRASS (on Mac OS X), I'm asked for my 
>location, mapset, and database.  I understand GRASS will always ask me for 
>this information, but I don't understand how to complete these fields.
>
>So, if I unzip the download and create the directory 
>/home/grass/spearfish, would it make sense to choose:
>
>LOCATION: spearfish
>MAPSET:   PERMANENT
>DATABASE: /home/grass/spearfish
>
>Does it even make sense to create this directory?

Yup. Every location has a PERMANENT. This would logically hold base maps. 
As you develop an area, you might add other mapsets like project1 and 
project2, or Bob and Fred. Maps in the PERMANENT mapset are accessible from 
all other mapsets within a location.

For locations I use the name of the coordinate system. Everything within a 
location has to be in the same coordinate system (or projection). So you 
might have a location named "UTM83-12" for UTM NAD83 Zone 12, and within it 
have mapsets for individual cities of counties.

The database is the path to the directory (folder) where all of your GRASS 
data is stored.

The only hard copy book on GRASS that I am aware of is "Open Source GIS: A 
GRASS GIS Approach", Neteler and Mitasova. It's expensive, but I would 
recommend it.

Rich

Richard W. Greenwood, PLS
(307) 733-0203
Rich at GreenwoodMap.com
www.GreenwoodMap.com