This quick tutorial will detail how to prepair the ABS Mesh Blocks to be used with MapBox’s TileMill. Beyond scope is how to install postgresql, postgis and TileMill. There is a lot of documentation how to do these tasks. First, we create a database to import the shapefile and population data into: Using ‘psql’ or ‘SQL Query’, create a new database: CREATE DATABASE transport WITH TEMPLATE postgis20 OWNER postgres; # Query returned successfully with no result in 5527 ms. It is necessary to first import the Mesh Block spatial file using something like PostGIS Loader.

EDIT 12-03-2025: I broke the maps when I deleted my AWS account, which I forgot as hosting the mbtiles. Five years ago I started exploring different mapping technologies by detailing instructions on installing Mapnik and mod_tile. Times have changed significantly in the last five years, and thanks a lot to the products offered by MapBox. After playing with TileMill, MBTiles, Leaflet and UTFGrids, it is great how many annoyances have been fixed by MapBox. I find it enjoyable making maps now, as I no longer need to worry about patching code just to get it to run, or mucking about with oddities in web browser.