1. Importing .e00 Files

DATA

Importing .e00 files (There are many government agencies that still have data in this format which stands for ArcInterchange File). If you come across this file type, you should know how to open them in ArcGIS.

Download allcoun.e00 from the zip file. This is a shapefile of all the cities along the Wasatch Front. Save it to a directory on the hard drive, preferably one without spaces in the file path. You will not need any of these files after this exercise, so you can delete them after you finish.

Open ArcToolbox icon that looks like a page with Red Toolbox to import an .e00 file:

1.     Click on "Conversion Tools" go down to To Coverage
2.     Select Import from e00. Another window automatically pops up that will allow you to input the name of the .e00 file and the automatically names the output file, which in this case will be “allcoun0”. The importing window should pop up in the lower right to show it is working.

You can close the ArcToolbox window. Your output will be a coverage, you will notice the icon next to the file is yellow and white and looks like three feature types superimposed on top of each other. A Coverage is basically an old ArcInfo file. Drag and drop it into your table of contents in ArcMap. To see the new file in ArcCatalog, you may have to refresh the view, you can do this by clicking on your folder name and go down to Refresh.
5.     Once you have it in ArcMap in the Table of Contents you have to export it as a shapefile so you can work with it. To do this:

Right click - go to Data - then Export data and Save as a .shp (shapefile) – name it anything you want – the default is Export_Output.shp. You will be asked if you want to bring it into the data View? Click on yes. You now have a shapefile.

Remove the coverage and just keep the new shapefile in the Data View. You should see a State Plane coordinate in the map unit window with feet as the units. The Allcounty shapefile is in State Plane. Label the cities and make them all a different color in Symbology. This we have done in a few labs already. Create a simple map in Layout adding the title Lab 4A, scale bar, and your name.

Projections:

Refresher of some cartographic principals- nothing to turn in the next few paragraphs, but useful to do.

Open a new mapfile (icon in upper left that looks like a sheet of white paper) and go back to the first assignment on the class web page and add the Ft. Douglas.tif to ArcMap. Look at the map units window at the bottom right corner of the Data View; you will should see correct UTM numbers for Zone 12 and the units are meters. When I say correct UTM zone, when you work with projections enough, you will become familiar with what the numbers should look like for your geographic region. For example, a UTM number in the Salt Lake Valley should look like the following: 428242.38, 4510183.81 with units in meters. The first number in a UTM projection will be a six digit number left of the decimal, making it a number in the hundreds of thousands, the second number will be a seven digit number, making it in the millions. A State Plane number for the Salt Lake Valley should look like the following: 1773891.71, 949200.22 and the units will be in feet. The numbers will vary, in a State Plane, you will see the larger number first (opposite than that for a UTM coordinate) and it will be 1 million something and the second number will vary as well, but will be in the 700,000 – 900,000 range North and South.

Now that you have the Ft. Douglas.tif in the window, add to ArcMap the shapefile you just saved from the .e00 file. Does it read in fine and superimpose on the tif? You will have to drag the shapefile down below the tif so you can see it. The allcounty data is all of the cities in the Salt Lake Valley, so the tif will appear as a small square in the upper right.
Notice what numbers appear in the map units window. It should say meters and be a UTM coordinate. Now open a new window and read the shapefile in first and then the Ft. Douglas tif. You should now see State Plane Coordinates and the units should be in feet. That is what projecting on the fly means, whatever file you read in first will be the one that sets the scale as far as projection and map units. (You still may have to drag the county shapefile down).

(When the project on the fly is not working, these two files will not be superimposed onto each other, they would be in different geographic space. You would then have to go in and reproject the files using the Define Projection and Project Wizards).

Now open a New Map File and continue with the second part of this lab.

2. Importing CAD files

When importing CAD files into ArcGIS, DXF and DWG files should import without any problems, this assignment uses a DWG file.

Download from the zip file the Cad drawing called: Olympic Village Feet and save it in your folder for this lab. Go into Catalog and browse until you find where you saved it. Drag the .dwg file into ArcMap in the Table of Contents. You should see the drawing in the main viewing window. When you click on the + sign next to the name, you should see five files that appear – these represent all of the different shape in the drawing. The .dwg is a Coverage and all of the different files that make up the CAD drawing must be exported to shape files in order for you to be able to work with them, in other words, in order to edit any of these files, they must be in shapefile format. For this part of Lab 4 you will change the shape of one of the polygons and in order to do that you must be working with a shapefile.

1.  Click and drag into your view, it will come in as a Coverage. To convert or export each drawing segment to a shapefile do the following:

2.   In the Table of Contents, click on the "+" sign next to the Coverage and expand the Coverage out to the separate drawing types.

3.   Right click on each one except the Annotation Layer and go to Data then Export data and Save as a .shp (shapefile)

4.   You will be asked if you want to bring it into the data View? Click on yes. You now have a shapefile.

5.   Remove all of the coverages (the original layers that came over when you dragged the CAD drawing) except the annotation. Save the annotation as a lyr  file.

6.   Right click on the annotation layer name and go down to Save as a Layer File.

7.   Every time you read up your shape files and you want the annotation that was created in CAD, you must add the Annotation layer.

8.   Click on the polygon layer and edit the polygon that has the number #327 that appears in the lower center part of the drawing . I want you to make the building longer in a south east direction (or you may change it any way you want, I just would like you to modify it). To do this you have to be in the edit mode and you want to double click on the building so that the “vertices” show up. The polygon shape is actually a part of two layers, the line layer and the polygon layer. One gives you the building outline and the other gives you the fill (area). In order to change it you have to click on both layers, one to change the shape and one to fill the changes you made with the color. You will click on the two lower vertices and extend them away from the building to create more of a long rectangle or design of your choice. The purpose of this is to show you that once the CAD file is a layer, it can be edited, whereas in the DWG format you cannot. Now color the polygons “Coral” or any color that will stand out to show the change.

9.   Set this up as a “layout” and add your name and the title Lab 4B. Export as a jpeg and send it as an attachment.

The reason you would want to import CAD files into a GIS project, would be to have the ability to EDIT the files and work with them simultaneously with other GIS files.