Arc4You Data

Arc4You Data - Overview of the commands

Add Fields: Create new fields in several tables or themes - whereby you can reuse previously added fields with a mouse click. You can initialize each field with a specific start value or a calculation expression. You can clear numeric fields with Null values (instead of 0 as initial value). You can determine if existing fields shall be kept unchanged, replaced or their field values shall be overwritten.
Delete Fields: Delete fields in several tables or themes at a single step.
Update Fields: Create or recalculate status fields in several tables or themes. Additionally to the standard fields of ArcView (Area, Perimeter and Length) 25 other shape measures to analyze your geographic data are predefined (e.g. thinness, roughness or convexity of polygons). You can define new calculation fields (i.e. often used formulas or calculation expressions) or edit the definition of the predefined fields.
Rename Fields: Rename fields in several tables or themes. You can rename each field individually or modify several field names using a calculation expression. This function works extremely fast, because the fields are renamed directly in the dBASE and INFO files on the hard disc (in other extensions new fields are created and all field values are copied).
Optimize Fields: Optimize fields in several tables and themes, i.e. the field width and number of decimal places is reduced to the required minimum (according to the current field values). This mostly reduces the file size of the tables enormously and thus increases the speed to process the data in future. You can also provide some spare places as a buffer for wider data to come. Moreover you can limit the accuracy of the numeric fields to a maximum number of decimal places.
Freeze Fields: Joined fields in several tables or themes are converted to real fields (i.e. fields with the same name are created and all field values are copied). The join can be removed after "freezing" it.
Modify Fields: Modify fields in several tables or themes, i.e. you can convert the data type (nearly all common numeric, boolean and date formats are supported). You can adjust the field width and number of decimal places (e.g. reduce or enlarge them) and recalculate the field values with any mathematical expression (e.g. multiplied by 100). You can either modify the existing fields or create new fields.
Reorder Fields: Reorder fields in several tables or themes. With a mouse click you can adjust the actual field order in the dBASE or INFO file to the spreadsheets in your project (if you move table fields in ArcView with the mouse, the move is done only virtually in your project, not in the data file itself). You can also change the order of the fields easily: move several fields in all tables to the first or final position, group several fields into a block etc.

Additionally this extension includes the following functions for joining tables or themes dynamically or statically (this means the field attributes of a source theme are added to a destination theme according to the spatial relationship of their graphic features - see Hints to join attributes):

Join Attributes: This function provides the classical dynamic join between two tables or themes (spatially via the Shape field or via matching data values). All existing joins of the project are displayed, therefore you can analyze which tables are joined by which fields. All joins are recorded, thus by choosing two tables, the most common or likely join fields are proposed automatically. Further you can remove some or all existing joins.
Load Attributes: Load multiple attributes in kind of a pivot table, i.e. the field values of all overlapping graphic features are transferred to separate fields. The new fields are numbered consecutively (e.g. Area1, Area2, Area3 etc.) and the field values are sorted descending by the amount of overlap (the field values of the largest area or the longest line inside of a polygon are copied to the fields with index 1).
Sum Attributes: Aggregated calculations based on several source records, i.e. the field values of all overlapping graphic features are summed up (sum, minimum, maximum, majority, standard deviation etc.). The field values can also be concatenated into a text field (e.g. for labeling purposes). The calculations can be made without priority, weighted by the degree of overlap or reduced proportionally.