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| Subject: | RE: [gislist] Export Polygon Coordinates - Part II |
| Date: |
10/08/2004 08:05:02 AM |
| From: |
ROSS,GREGORY K |
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"As always, investing time to learn the capabilities of your software
pays off in the long run."
Well said Bill!=20
I have observed that 99% of the complaints about ANY software really
involve people not knowing or understanding the capabilities and/or
purpose of their own software ( meaning that which they chose and/or
paid for themselves.)
My reply to such complaints (especially those aimed at leaders like
Microsoft or ESRI) is to "grab and pencil and paper and do the math,
computation, analysis, drawing, etc. WITHOUT the computer and/or
software and then see how you fell about your problem!!"
Gregory Ross
University of Florida / IFAS
Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory
---Original Message-----
From: gislist-bounces@lists.geocomm.com
[mailto:gislist-bounces@lists.geocomm.com] On Behalf Of Quantitative
Decisions
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 8:57 PM
To: gislist@lists.thinkburst.com
Subject: Re: [gislist] Export Polygon Coordinates - Part II
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,=20
>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=20
>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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