BruTile

BruTile is essentially a library developed as an accessible and open source GIS tiling library, such as Bing or OpenStreetMap. It is worth mentioning that the tool is a platform independent library and can be used by other more sophisticated and complex libraries.

The role of the library is to construct a tile source, meaning the object that contains all relevant information. A secondary, but just as important role is to help calculate the tiles that are needed for a given project taking the map extent and resolution into account.

More often than note, tile services such as the ones mentioned above store the data in pre-rendered tiles with various levels of detail. The role of the library is to go through the tiles and find the tiles that correspond to a certain map viewpoint. Although the utility returns the data as independent, raw image streams, keep in mind that the tiles are not displayed or graphical in any way.

If users need the data displayed, then they need to rely on other third party tools for this purpose. The developer recommends such tools and some examples include ArcBruTile, SharpMap or Mapsui. Alternatively, users can consider writing their own code to meet the prerequisites for their project.