XTools Description

XTools Description

9/15/2003 Version

If you are interested in acquiring an ArcView Extension with a number of useful tools, read on.

XTools ArcView Extension General Description: This extension contains useful vector spatial analysis, shape conversion and table management tools developed, collected, or modified by Mike DeLaune, Oregon Department of Forestry. All of the more complicated tools have Shift click instructions. That is, you hold down the shift key and click on the menu item to get a description of the tool and instructions for running it. The description and instructions are copied to the system clipboard, so you can paste them into a text editor and thus print them out.

Xtools has been tested on Windows 95, 98 NT, and 2000 machines with ArcView 3.0a, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3. It has also been used on Unix and Macintosh machines.

So, what is in Xtools?

Xtools makes these additions to the View GUI:

1. An Xtools View Document Menu with menu items that are equivalent in purpose to some ArcInfo Commands. In the following list, the equivalent ArcInfo commands are in parentheses:

Buffer Selected Features (BUFFER)
Clip With Polygon(s) (CLIP)
Erase Features (ERASE)
Identity (IDENTITY)
Intersect Themes (INTERSECT)
Merge Themes (PUT, GET)
Union Polygon themes (UNION)
Update Polygon Theme (UPDATE)

2. Additional features in this menu include:

View/Change XTools Defaults
XTools Batch Overlay (batch operation of the Clip, Erase, Identity, Intersect, Union, and Update scripts).
View XTools Overlay Log File
Recalculate Area, Perimeter , Length , Acres, Hectares
Transfer / Convert Selected Features
Convert Multipart Shapes To Single Part
Convert Polygons to Polylines
Make One Polygon From Polylines
Make One Polygon From Points
Make One PolyLine From Points
Convert Shapes To Graphics
Convert Graphics To Shapes
Convert Shapes to Centroids
Batch Import Active themes To Shapefiles
Manage Shapefiles.

3. Xtools also adds one button (with a Sum Icon) to the View GUI. This button provides information on the number of selected features in each theme, the total acres in selected features for polygon themes, the total length in selected features for polyline themes, and the ability to clear all selected features in all themes in one operation. XTools also provides an improved ‘’Set Working Directory’’ function item in the View, File menu."

Other changes to the View GUI include: Setting the View map units and distance units to user-specified defaults when a new View is created, displaying acres (hectares) when digitizing in a new polygon feature or graphic; and displaying the acres (hectares) of an existing polygon feature or graphic and the length of a polyline feature or graphic when selecting features.

Xtools makes these additions to the Table GUI:

An Xtools Menu with the following menu items:

View/Change XTools Defaults
Field Properties
Table Structure Information
Table Statistics
Summarize Multiple Fields
Delete Multiple Fields
Recalculate Area, Perimeter , Length , Acres, Hectares
Export Table to Excel Spreadsheet. (MS Windows users only)
Open Table In Excel

Xtools makes this addition to the Project GUI:

An Xtools Menu with:

View/Change XTools Defaults
See Environment Paths: Shows the paths currently assigned to the following environment variables: HOME, TEMP, CWD, AVHOME, AVEXT, AVBIN, USEREXT, DEVEXT, TMPDIR.
About XTools...

Additional Information About XTools:

XTools has a web site at http://www.odf.state.or.us/stateforests/sfgis

At that web site you can find the latest version of XTools available for free download, an XTools FAQ, a comparison of XTools overlay operations to ArcInfo overlay operations, a description of spatial overlay bugs in ESRIs Avenue language at AV3.1 and AV3.2, a list of the new features available at each version of XTools, a list of known bugs in XTools, and XTools documentation.

Feedback:

Note: This ArcView Extension is not guaranteed to be free of bugs. Please report any bugs you find to mike.g.delaune@state.or.us

Give as complete a description of the problem as you can, along with the exact wording of any error messages. Before deciding that you have encountered a bug, please eliminate these potential sources of problems:

1. Many Xtools scripts create new shapefiles or alter existing shapefiles. Verify that you have write permission in the location where the new or altered shapefile is being written.

2. Many Xtools scripts operate only on selected features in the input themes and overlay themes. If you do an overlay when no selected features overlap, you will get an empty shapefile as output.

Acknowledgements:

Buffer Selected Features is a script by Jim Peroutky. I picked it up off the ESRI site and made a couple of minor changes. Two of the scripts(Field Properties, and Table Structure Information) are ESRI sample scripts with no changes.

''Convert Shapes to Centroids'' was provided by Marco Boerlinga.

''Make One PolyLine From Points" was written by Mike Schuft.

The rest of the scripts were written by Mike DeLaune.

Have fun!

Mike DeLaune 9/15/2003