Finding Additional Resources Adding Extensions to ArcView

1
Finding Additional Resources Adding Extensions
to ArcView

• John Q. Murray
• Murray Information Services, Inc.
• johnnyq_at_murrayinfo.com

2
This course is just a start

• Designed to whet your appetite for more
• Many books, courses, websites, and other
  resources are available
• Montana GIS library / NRIS website
• Intermountain GIS Conference brings together
  users from Montana, Idaho, others

3
Finding themes for your project

• Internet is a great source for map data
• State of Montana Natural Resources Information
  System nris.state.mt.us
• ESRI (developed ArcView) esri.com
• Government agencies. Tribes, US Forest Service,
  counties have GIS staffs. We can ask them to
  share

4
www.esri.com/training

• Virtual campus
• Online classes
• Some are free
• Others cost 100

5
support.esri.com/forums

• Help from ESRI support engineers and other users
• Support forums for ArcView GIS
• Lots of helpful folks all over the country

6
ArcView Extensions

• Add-ons that provide additional tools
• ESRI sells 3 (expensive) extensions
• Spatial Analyst
• 3D Analyst
• Network Analyst
• Many users provide custom tools that they use
  daily in their work free on the website

7
Downloading and installing an ArcView extension

• ESRI offers many scripts and extensions at
  gis.esri.com/ arcscripts/ index.cfm
• Top Ten Downloads 1 XTools, written at the
  Oregon Dept of Forestry
• It comes as a zip file Xtools.zip

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Installing XTools

• Go to the download site
• Download xtools.zip
• Extract its three files

xtools.avx the extension XTNew.pdf,
XToolsDoc.pdf the documentation
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Copy the .avx file to the ArcView extensions
directory

• Copy the extension to the directory \esri
  \av_gis30 \arcview \ext32
• Select the File menu Extensions command
• From the Extensions dialog, check the XTools
  extension

10
The XTools extension has its own menu

• ArcView now has a new XTools menu
• One useful tool calculates area, perimeter,
  length, acres
• First set the default units
• Select the first Xtools menu item View/Change
  XTools Defaults (highlighted)

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Change XTools settings

• We will be working with a theme of Montana
  counties in feet
• For most settings, select feet
• For the area setting, select acres
• Click Close

12
Get ready to calculate area

• Go to the View with the Montana counties theme
• Make a copy from the Theme menu pick Convert to
  shapefile
• Save the copy as Countys-feet.shp

13
Recalculate the area

• From the Xtools menu, select the command
  Calculate area
• Select the new theme and click OK
• Now check out the fresh data Click on the
  attribute table button

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Updated fields Area_Feet, Perimeter_Feet, Acres

• If they didnt already exist, XTools would add
  these fields to the table

15
1 more Polygons to lines

• Select the Xtools menu command Convert Polygons
  to Polylines
• Select the theme to convert
• Countys-feet.shp
• Click OK

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Save and display the new theme

• Name the new line theme countys-pline.shp
• Click OK
• Turn off the polygon themes and display the new
  line theme
• Great stuff, and its all free!

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Ask and you shall receive

• He who asks a question is a fool for five
  minutes he who does not ask a question remains a
  fool forever. -Chinese proverb
• The GIS user community is very helpful
• When you ask for help on the ESRI forums, you
  usually get a very quick answer
• http//support.esri.com/forums/