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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Mailing List Archives |
| Subject: | Re: [gislist] Export Polygon Coordinates - Part II |
| Date: |
10/07/2004 08:00:02 PM |
| From: |
Quantitative Decisions |
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At 01:59 PM 10/7/2004 -0700, Smith Travis G Civ 56 RMO/GIS wrote:
>I am in amazement that such a seemingly remedial/fundamental process, such
>as exporting polygon coordinates from ArcView 3.x could be so convoluted.
>The bottom line is, you have to generate, or invoke a script (i.e.
>shp2gen.ave) to complete this task.
The original query was,
>Does someone out there know how to export a polygon's coordinates to some
>type of file (i.e. Excel, ASCII, etc...) using ArcView 3.2?
Let's be fair. Out of the box, ArcView 3.x exports polygon coordinates to
files literally with the click of a button: choosing "Theme|Save as
shapefile" converts any vector data source into a file whose format is a
lingua franca of GIS, readable by virtually every modern vector GIS program
as well as many CAD programs, scientific models, and whatnot. Problem solved.
Maybe, because the situation is so simple, nobody bothered to respond with
this obvious solution. (I didn't.)
I suspect Travis must have received a lot of confusing, obtuse, or
convoluted suggestions. Maybe the kind respondents interpreted his
question in unexpected ways. Well, as with any Internet list, you get what
you pay for :-).
Perhaps Travis wanted coordinates in an ASCII format so that a text editor
could read them. The reality is that there exists no standard ASCII format
for vector features. Thus, using ANY software, you would need to write a
script (or be left in the cold), unless you were really lucky and your
format happened to be supported by the software. (ArcView 3.3 contains a
menu item that displays the coordinates of a polygon to the user.)
Generating a script in ArcView, or in any modern GIS for that matter, is a
simple matter and not worth a public complaint. It certainly isn't
"convoluted." (Process: Copy code, create new script document, choose
"Edit|Paste", press the compile button, open the map ("view") document,
return to the script, press the run button: one double click, six clicks,
5-15 seconds. You can attach the script to a menu item or button for
repeated use, reducing the effort to one click each time.) Travis should
feel fortunate that a script that meets his needs is freely available and
easy to find and download.
I'm confident the process isn't much different in MapInfo, Manifold, or any
other of ArcView 3.x's competitors (including ArcGIS 8/9), although the
availability of a free and easily-found script/program to create a
particular output format may be questionable.
As always, investing time to learn the capabilities of your software pays
off in the long run.
Cheers,
Bill Huber
Quantitative Decisions
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