Jenness Enterprises - ArcGIS Tools; Tools for Graphics and Shapes

Mexican Spotted Owl, stretching...

Name: Tools for Graphics and Shapes v. 1.1.85 (Click Name to Download)

Install File: GraphicsShapes.exe

Last Modified: March 28, 2008

View Online PDF Manual (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Topics: Sphere, Vincenty, Geodesic, Great Circle, Spherical Triangle, Polygon, Centroid, Center of Mass, Vector, Area, Haversine

Author: Jeff Jenness

Wildlife Biologist, GIS Analyst

Jenness Enterprises

3020 N. Schevene Blvd.

Flagstaff, AZ, 86004 USA

(928) 607-4638

jeffj@jennessent.com

Description: This extension includes a large suite of tools for calculating geometric attributes of vector features and for selecting and naming graphics. All tools are available at the ArcView license level.

Among many other functions, this extension offers tools for calculating the true area and centroid of polygons as they lay on the sphere, thereby avoiding errors caused by projection distortions. This extension also offers tools to calculate true lengths of polylines as they lie on the spheroid, using Vincenty’s equations. This manual thoroughly explains all algorithms used to calculate geometric attributes on the sphere and spheroid.

This extension also includes a tool to create a new shapefile from within ArcMap, either by creating an empty shapefile or by converting graphics.

Output: Several tools produce point, multipoint, polyline or polygon shapefiles. Some geometry tools produce new shapefiles while others add new fields to attribute tables.

Recommended Citation Format: For those who wish to cite this extension, the author recommends something similar to:

Tools for Graphics and Shapes: Extension for ArcGIS. Jenness Enterprises. Available at: http://www.jennessent.com/arcgis/shapes_graphics.htm

Please let me know if you cite this extension in a publication. I will update the citation list to include any publications that I am told about.

Requires: ArcGIS 9.1 or better, at any license level. The "Build Polygon" function requires ArcView 9.2 or newer. This extension has not been tested with ArcGIS 9.0, and I am sure it will not work with ArcGIS 8.x. This tool has only been tested on Windows 2000 and XP.

General Instructions:

1) This tool must be installed in the Windows registry before ArcGIS will recognize it. To install, double-click on the file “GraphicsShapes.exe” and follow the instructions.

For detailed instructions, view the on-line PDF version of Tools for Graphics and Shapes Manual

Revisions

Version 1.0

	Build 1.0.291 (January 1, 2008): Initial Release
	Build 1.0.293 (January 2, 2008): Minor aesthetic changes to dialogs; fixed some typos in manual.
	January 3, 2008: Corrected typo in manual.

Version 1.1

Build 1.1.73 (January 9, 2008):

	Added “Build Polygon” function
	Added Polyline Azimuth options to “Calculate Geometry” tool.
	Added code to disable “Build Polygon” tool if user was running a pre-9.2 version of ArcGIS.
	Added code to prevent error messages when some functions were cancelled.
	Added code to force shapefile field names to conform to dBASE restrictions, when field data were copied from non-shapefile sources.
	Added scroll bars to the message section of the “Message Box” dialog.
	Added persistence code so the document would remember the last save folder, and the Progress Dialog parameters, from one session to the next.
	Fixed the link in the “About” dialog so that it pointed to the correct web page.

Build 1.1.76 (January 10, 2008) Corrects a bug where the Spheroidal Length was being written to the wrong field.

Build 1.1.85 (March 28, 2008)

Repaired a bug in the “Calculate Geometry” dialog in which it might crash with the error message “Object variable or With block variable not set”, occuring at line 48 of the form frmGeometry.frm, if no layers are selected in the Map Table of Contents.

Enjoy! Please contact the author if you have problems or find bugs.

Jeff Jenness jeffj@jennessent.com

Jenness Enterprises http://www.jennessent.com

3020 N. Schevene Blvd. (928) 607-4638

Flagstaff, AZ 86004

USA

Please visit Jenness Enterprises ArcGIS Tools site for more ArcGIS tools and other software by the author. We also offer GIS consultation services for both ArcGIS and ArcView 3.x to help you meet your specific data analysis and application development needs.