10 replies to this topic

[Ed Gage]

I was wondering if there is a way to export a map from the layout view of ArcMap with a world file. "Create world file" is a checkbox option when exporting a map as a tiff from the data view, but it is grayed out when exporting from the layout view. I'm interested in not just the data and labels in the view itself, but graticules, legends, titles, etc., which I'd like to drape over a terrain in VNS. Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Unit Seven]

That would be nice wouldn't it? I've always wanted to do this and haven't found a way around it I'm afraid. I guess it's left out as layout view can have more than one map on the page.

Do you know how to create a world file by hand? It's a pretty simple text format and if it's only one isn't to hard once you have the upper left coordinates. If you need to do a lot let me know and I can run through how I've automated creating them using Excel, a simple Perl find and replace script and a text editor.

Cheers,

Sam.

[Ed Gage]

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't thought of the issue of multiple map views at different scales in a single layout - upon reflection, I can see why that wouldn't work. I've never created a world file by hand, but looking at them in a text editor, I can see that there's not much to them. I'll do some experimenting and see if I can make it work. Thanks again!

[Unit Seven]

No problem Ed—yeah I can see why it wouldn't work but would be nuce to have a script that would generate a tfw for a chosen Layout frame at a chosen resolution. Also most times I think most people only we only have

Just so you don't do down the wrong track the numbers are not the top left corner as they may look at some scales but the centre of the top left corner, and obviously the pixel size. So the numbers should be the

• UpperLeft_X + PixelSize/2
• UpperLeft_Y - PixelSize/2

I always have to stop and thing which I should be adding half a pixel to and which I should be subtracting from.

Format of the numbers below:

• PixelSize
  0.00000000000000
  0.00000000000000
  -PixelSize
  UpperLeftCentre_X
  UpperLeftCentre_Y

[Hans van der Maarel]

Just so you don't do down the wrong track the numbers are not the top left corner as they may look at some scales but the centre of the top left corner, and obviously the pixel size. So the numbers should be the

• UpperLeft_X + PixelSize/2
• UpperLeft_Y - PixelSize/2

I always have to stop and thing which I should be adding half a pixel to and which I should be subtracting from.

Format of the numbers below:

• PixelSize
  0.00000000000000
  0.00000000000000
  -PixelSize
  UpperLeftCentre_X
  UpperLeftCentre_Y

And to clarify on this a bit... the first pixel size (line 1) is pixel size in x direction. The second one (line 4) is negative pixel size in y direction. They don't have to be the same.

[Green Palolo]

If you export to JPG you can choose to have a world file created.

 world_file.jpg   60.45K   55 downloads

[Unit Seven]

If you export to JPG you can choose to have a world file created.

 world_file.jpg   60.45K   55 downloads

Are you sure you are in layout view and not data view? You just got me quite excited that this was one of those 'in the know' quirks but when I went to layout view to export I couldn't choose to create a world file.

Cheers,

Sam.

[Green Palolo]

Sorry, yes I was in data view.

I did this once a long time ago in AML, but my users didn't like the cartographic elements on the adjacent landscape so I stopped creating the images.

[Nick McW]

Hi -

Did a solution to this ever surface? It would be a tremendously useful feature, specially now for overlaying complete map layouts on Google Earth without having to manually register them.

About map layouts containing several frames, the answer would be to let the user choose which frame they wanted to register the exported map graphic to.

Cheers -
Nick.

[Unit Seven]

I had a reply from someone at ESRI adding my organisation to a list of 'requestees' fro this feature as he thought he had a case to have it implemented but as far as I know the easiest way is to go to your layout properties and get the view extents of the frame and then create a tfw file in a text editor as above.

If you have a lot of frames as long as you have a polygon shapfile or feature class with a box for each frame you can automate the creation of these. Using the rough steps below:

• Have a name for each rectangle
• calculate min x
• calculate max y
• export this table as a spreadsheet
• you can now add some columns and once you have decided the final GSD you can create the centre x and centre y values needed for the tfw.

I then use a custom Perl script to create the tfws from this spreadsheet. It is basically a text find and replace—a mail merge. So it runs through a template text file and replaces set values with values from the spreadsheet. Happy to share this if you have a need for it.

Just so I can get in before Hans—FME could do this as well using similar methods. Also you could calculate your centre pixels in Arc rather than the spreadsheet but I like the option to change. I have a speadsheet of my tile layouts and then I'll run full res and half res tfws so in the spreadsheet I have a column for each.

We have created 10,000+ tfws at a time like this from a spreadsheet.

[cloveman]

ArcMap’s PLTS (Production Line Toolset) Map Production System (MPS) extension has a geotiff exporter that functions from layout view. If you have a map document with more than one data frame you can choose which projection will be assigned to the tiff.