Discovering 3D Maps in Excel

I’ll bet you didn’t know Excel could do this!  Or maybe you do know, but are not sure just how to put it to use.  In this post I will demonstrate this powerful and under-appreciated Excel 3D Maps data visualization tool in a neighborhood homeowner’s association spreadsheet.  In part two I will offer a more detailed demonstration for how to build this visualization from the ground up.

 

Start with the data

The key to a good data visualization is access to good data, and mapping data in Excel 3D maps is no different.  If you have a spreadsheet or other dataset with some location data in it, chances are you can make immediate use of that data to produce map charts and 3D visualizations like this one.  In this particular case, the data is obtained from publicly-available county records, and it concerns the residential land use in the county.  If you do a search on terms like “open data” and “GIS”, for your state or county, chances are you will find similar data pertinent to you.  The spreadsheet we start with here is a subset of such data describing a neighborhood governed by  a particular homeowner’s association.

Demonstration

In this first video, we can see various scenarios for the use of address and construction data in a way that might be relevant to a homeowner’s association, a realtor, a zoning official, or similar role.  The video gives a tour of the major features of 3D Maps for this scenario, including:

• Accessing 3D maps from your spreadsheet
• Use of “Layers” to conduct and save analyses
• Filtering your data to ask interactive queries
• Information discovery by combining layers
• Using visualization as a query tool

 

 

How to construct your own Excel 3D Map visualization

In part two of this post, I will show step-by-step how to construct the visualization that was demonstrated in Part 1.  Again in video form, the how-to covers:

• Introduction to 3D Maps features
• Preparing your data for use in 3D Maps
• Associating 3D map projects with your spreadsheet
• Creating layers to save custom queries
• Updating visualizations with changes in your spreadsheet

 

 

What have we learned?

I hope you see Excel 3D maps in a new light, and can think of ways that you can use it. When you find you have geo data available, doing a visualization not only gives you a natural and interactive way to query it, but also unlocks insights about how that data can be used in new ways.  In the demonstrations linked above, we saw examples such as seeing how multiple filters reveal interesting intersections in the data, finding three records with erroneous zip codes, and a possible “unicorn” house, possibly the only 3-level split style house in a neighborhood of nearly 2400 addresses.

As is the case with other data visualization techniques, engaging with your data in a new way reveals as many new questions as answers, and sets you on a path to new ideas.

I would love to hear your comments, questions, and other ideas about easy visualization of geographic data.  Leave a comment below!

 

Until Next time,

Jim