3 replies to this topic

[Covasnianu Adrian]

Hi!

I'm trying to digitize a topographical maps, mainly the buildings. For this I want to geometrically digitize the shapes/roofs of the buildings. Is there any option to edit something like CAD technique and to have the right angles in the edit sesion?

I saw that in ESRI ArcView there are some options using perpendicular or parallel features, but it is annoying to permanently select CTRL + P or CTRL+ E.
Any suggestion is useful.

Thanks in advance!

[jrat]

What version of Arc are you using. ArcMap 10 has constrain to right angle and parallel in the create feature popup toolbar that follows your editing cursor.

[Covasnianu Adrian]

What version of Arc are you using. ArcMap 10 has constrain to right angle and parallel in the create feature popup toolbar that follows your editing cursor.

Hello, I'm using ArcView 9.3.1.

[Rob]

if you need to digitized a ton of building footprints in arc, here's a good workflow (this is from one of their blogs so maybe dave or aileen can post a link if it looks familiar):

but you basically create a custom tool bar that will contain the few tools that you will need while in your edit session.

this include:

the rotate data frame tool
the start/save edit session tools
and the rectangular/circle edit tools from the advanced editing tool bar
maybe the pan hand tool

create a custom tool bar that lets you pull all of these together in one spot and then you can have them very close to the objects you are creating. this greatly reduces mouse movement and allows for rapid shape creation.

the basic way it works it to start and edit session, rotate the data frame so that the buildings you are trying to digitize are lined straight up on the screen, and then use the rectangular tool to draw a rectangle around the building. if it is a L shaped building, you might need two rectangles to capture it. don't worry about merging them yet. so you rapidly can go through an area, turning the data frame to align the map image n/s, and then using the advanced editing tools to quickly respresent the geometry. once you are done or have worked for a few minutes, select all the polygons you have created, select editor menu>merge then save edits. works very well. again, look on the esri site if you need more step by step but it is pretty staright forward if you have intermediate expericence with that software.

oh, and i find some coffee and music goes a long way in this type of work.

rj