FAQs and How-To's
Shapefile editing in ArcMap
Need to clip one polygon feature in a multiple polygon shapefile to a boundary eg coastline
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From: http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm?id=490&pid=487&topicname=Common_polygon_editing_tasks
Splitting a polygon by an overlapping line feature - if its just one feature (polygon or line), and not that you need to select a whole layer!
If you have a line feature that crosses a polygon, you can use the line to split the polygon, for example, if you want to divide an administrative boundary at a road or river.
If you have an ArcEditor or ArcInfo license, you can use the Construct Features command.
- Select the line feature or features you want to use to split the polygon.
- Set the target to the polygon layer.
- Click Construct Features
 on the Topology toolbar and choose to split existing features in target layer using selection.
Alternative method:
1. select the polygon feature you need to clip
2. Export data to new shapefile
3. Delete the original polygon feature in the original multiple polygon shapefile
4. Clip your new shapefile with just the polygon you want clipping in it
5. copy the record, then paste it into your original multiple polygon shapefile, to replace the one you deleted.
6. If copy - paste doesn't work, check you are in data view rather than layout view.
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Species richness map creation
Need to get colour ramps for species richness ranges - copy from someone elses style set to yours.
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1 Person with the correct style set: Under Tools - Styles - Style Manager - find the pathname to your personal styles folder, copy the whole pathname
2 Paste it into a windows folder navigator, delete the name.style at the end so you get into the directory, copy the name.style file into an accessible place
3. On the other persons computer - load the Style Manager then go to the Styles tab on the right hand side. Scroll to the bottom and select add - then add the style set you have copied into an accessible place.
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Map Batching in ArcMap
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Map batching button is missing from the toolbar in Arcmap
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- Right-click on toolbar and scroll to the bottom to select 'Customise'
- Under the tab "Commands" scroll to the bottom of the list to select [uiControls]
- Change the 'save in' selection from Normal.mxd to the current project. Two commands should come up in the Commands box on the right, Project.AddScaleB and Project.BatchSelectByTheme
- Drag these to the toolbar - inside an existing toolbar, and they should create small grey boxes as they are attached to that toolbar.
- You can then change the icon to something more meaningful, and run them.
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| Frequent reasons for mapbatch script failing to run and other checks to make on your map setup before running mapbatch |
- Have you got an output folder called c:\Workspace (or navigated to a folder that exists?)
- Have you set the symbology to classified Legend fields?
- Is the country labels layer on top?
- Are all the fields filled in? (Red list category, Binomial, Legend etc)
- Have you removed the join on a list (for running the map batch on a selection)
- images are referenced locally - copy folder J:\Vineet\nicky\VBA_maps\images to folder where you have .mxd project
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Will not run, says project files are missing
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Labels are scaling
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Right-click data frame name, general, check Reference scale - should be None so labels do not scale but stay the same size!
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Tools created from Python scripts won't run in ArcCatalog/ArcMap
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Check that the default program to open .py files is IDLE not PythonWin!
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In addition, some more FAQs for Cambridge staff (but might be useful for others):
1. I have a list of species and how do I know if my spatial data have all of them?
Try this new tool in the RedList toolbox. You may need to define your default workspace in the environment settings if you want a resultant text file in your workspace.
2. Why is it that my species distribution does not align with the base layer?
Most likely it is that your species layer has an unknown coordinate system that is different than the coordinate system of the data frame, i.e., it will be still reprojected on the fly but incorrectly. Another cause could be datum shift, i.e., data were mapped in different coordinate systems based on different datums (ellipsoid). Unless there is a defined geographic coordinate system transformation, this problem cannot be solved without introducing errors of some kind.
3. I have some GIS files in formats other than ESRI shapefiles how do I convert them?
We have FME software in the office which allows you to change formats. Ask Vineet or Adrian for more information and complicated transforms.
4. Where can I find all the base layers?
All base layers can be found in the central GIS database on ESRI01 machine. You can go to database connection and enter the following connection parameters:
5. I have a folder full of images, how can I get a list of their names?
You can go to start/run:
The above example shows how to get a list of file names that end with .png extension and write the result to a text file in C:\
Alternatively, there should be similar scripts for functionalities I’ve built. Check my header file Yichuan.py for more information.
S:\Yichuan\Scripts_tools\speciesmappingtools\scripts\Yichuan.py
6. I have a folder full of shapefiles (a shapefile per species), how can I get only those in my list?
You can use a function called CopyShapefileFromList in Yichuan.py. It is very useful for tasks like getting 300 shapefiles from a pool of 2000 in a folder. Read the function documentation for details.
7. Why is it that the map batcher throws an error even though I have checked out the VBA licens e?
It may be due to the fact you haven’t installed VBA resources when ArcGIS 10 Desktop was setup. If it is the case, you need to install the VBA component from the installation files. See the following picture and click setup for ArcGIS Desktop VBA Resources for Developers.
8. Where can I find standard IUCN style when mapping?
In the style manager you can add IUCNstyle_new.style style file which has all commonly used symbols/colours. You can add this library to your working map document as shown below.
9. How do I batch tools?
You can right click on a tool and click batch
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