GenesisIV Tutorial: Importing Data from ArcView

For demonstration we'll just use the default landcapes. We'll import data from two SHP files - roads.shp, which contains polyline data, and mixed.shp, which contains polygon data. The first step is to create a new project a project and add two new layers surface layers - Roads and Mixed.

Next we open the Landscape Definition module and from the Edit menu select Georeferencing. It is essential that georeferencing coordinates are correctly set up before importing data. Here we have entered suitable coordinates into the left hand box (labelled Georeferencing). Click OK to confirm.

With the georeferenced coordinates set up for the landscape open the ArcView SHP import plugin from the plugins menu. This images shows the plugin dialog after locating the roads SHP file using the elipsis (...) button against the ArcView SHP edit box. Note that the plugin scans the file and automatically returns the bounds coordinates for the data to be imported. This should match up with the georeferencng coordinates previously entered (and shown here for convenience in the Landscape Grid Coordinates box).

Other important data items to note in this dialog are:

• Use Layers: The layer into which the SHP file data will be imported. Select from the drop down list
• Shape Type: Read only. Displays the type of data in the file.
• Select: Allows filtering by attribute. In this case we'll take the default - Select All.
• Value: Filter value if filtering by attribute.
• Point Space Tolerance. Points closer than the value will be merged - this throws away unneccessarily fine data which would not be shown because of fractalization uncertainty when rendering. If your import has a great many points you may want to increase this value - up to 10 times the default (calculated by GenesisIV) will not have too much of an effect on the final image.

When done click Import - the data is imported, with the current object number shown in the Importing box. When finished this shows complete. The data is not shown on the landscape until the plugin is closed, so before doing so we'll import the Mixed data.

This dialog looks very much as before, except the Shape Type box now shows Polygon, and we've taken the screen shot with the Select drop down box extended. Importing as before and closing shows the following on the Landscape Definition module screen.

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Here the mixed polygon data is shown as the red areas, and the roads as the grey lines. The colours were selected when setting up the layers. Once imported vector data can be edited in the usual way.