8 replies to this topic

[mika]

Hi all,

Is it possible to export a surface from Arc to .bil?

Cheers
dom

[mika]

I've just realised that the question I asked might not be clear enough... What I actually wan't do is to export a surface from ArcView and save it as . bil.
thx

[Clark Geomatics]

I've just realised that the question I asked might not be clear enough... What I actually wan't do is to export a surface from ArcView and save it as . bil.
thx

Shouldn't be a problem - however, you just mention "Arcview" - I'm not sure what version you are running - Arcview on it's own is fairly limited when it comes to working with rasters. Note that the native raster export format for Arcview grids is a BIL (it also writes out a .hdr - header file). The other issue you need to be aware of is if it is a rendered surface (say you made a surface in 3D Analyst) then you will have problems if you have multiple 'z' values at the same grid location - i.e. an overhang.

[mika]

I am sitting on ArcView 9.2 with spatial analyst. i wish I had a stronger version but I won't. Not anytime soon anyway.

And also i am new to esri stuff so perhaps it doesn't make it any easier.

Anyway, when I right click on the raster component in the catalog tree under arc catalog I get two options: export to mrsid and to other raster format, and here I get only one option - .img (imagine I believe), and i can't change it to anything else. When I try I just get a message that the format is not allowed, appropriate or something of that sort.

The other way i tried, was to export a raster from arc map. Here I can choose: jp2, jpg, png, gif, grid, imagine image, tiff and bmp.

In the help file I only found some info about the bil format, but nothing about exporting rasters using it.

Any ideas how to get there or that's the limitation I have to accept while having the lowest versin of arc only?

Dom

[mdsumner]

Get FWTools and gdal_translate the thing to .bil using that. ArcGIS uses GDAL anyway . . .

I am sitting on ArcView 9.2 with spatial analyst. i wish I had a stronger version but I won't. Not anytime soon anyway.

And also i am new to esri stuff so perhaps it doesn't make it any easier.

Anyway, when I right click on the raster component in the catalog tree under arc catalog I get two options: export to mrsid and to other raster format, and here I get only one option - .img (imagine I believe), and i can't change it to anything else. When I try I just get a message that the format is not allowed, appropriate or something of that sort.

The other way i tried, was to export a raster from arc map. Here I can choose: jp2, jpg, png, gif, grid, imagine image, tiff and bmp.

In the help file I only found some info about the bil format, but nothing about exporting rasters using it.

Any ideas how to get there or that's the limitation I have to accept while having the lowest versin of arc only?

Dom

[mika]

Get FWTools and gdal_translate the thing to .bil using that. ArcGIS uses GDAL anyway . . .

Manifolders are everywhere I see Thanks for the advice, I am already downloading the tools

Dom

[Clark Geomatics]

Get FWTools and gdal_translate the thing to .bil using that. ArcGIS uses GDAL anyway . . .

Manifolders are everywhere I see Thanks for the advice, I am already downloading the tools

Dom

Dom - you should be able to use the .img format within ArcMap and not worry about another set of tools. I think this is a BIL format. You may need to create a .hdr file as well.

[mika]

Dom - you should be able to use the .img format within ArcMap and not worry about another set of tools. I think this is a BIL format. You may need to create a .hdr file as well.

The point is i am not very happy with the shaded relief arc produces from etopo2 and I was trying to employ another package to do it (microdem). And suprisingly enough I can't manage to export my dem to anything redable by microdem. It accepts .bil and lots of other formats, including esri's ascii grids, but I had no luck in saving my elevation data in something eatable.

Luckily I am not in a rush at the moment and have some time to get used to arcview (I actually have to do so). Otherwise I'd go for manifold and wouldn't bother at all.
But having said I have to learn arcview, do you know how to generate headers for img files?

Cheers
Dom

[mdsumner]

Typically the raster.hdr file with a raster.bil ( if it's ESRI .hdr Labelled) looks like this:

BYTEORDER I
LAYOUT BIL
NROWS 61
NCOLS 87
NBANDS 1
NBITS 32
BANDROWBYTES 348
TOTALROWBYTES 348
PIXELTYPE FLOAT
ULXMAP 1
ULYMAP 61
XDIM 1
YDIM 1

It's just the metadata you need for reading the binary data as a raster. More info here:

http://www.gdal.org/...rious.html#EHdr