POpulation and PLAces research group

Creating Shape files using ArcGIS

Susan Lomax

GEOGRAPHY AVAILABLE• UK Districts• E & W Districts• UK GORS• England GORs• English Counties• Northern Ireland Coastline• Scotland GOR• Wales GOR• Scottish Districts• Welsh Districts• Northern Ireland Districts• USA• Canada• Australia• Most European countries

Right click here and click on copy

Paste into suitably named folder by right clicking on folder. Click on file so that rename box appears and give the copy a new name:

Districts.shp

•Create or acquire a .csv file. This file will have the attributes you would like to map. Below is file with data waiting to be mapped:

•Save it into your folder

Zone_Code is the identifier

• Next create a ‘Personal Geodatabase’

• To do this, right click on the folder where you pasted the shape file

• Click on ‘New’, then ‘Personal Geodatabase’

• Click on this file and give it a suitable name

Geodatabase

Shape file

Data table

• The next task is to import these 2 files into the Geodatabase,

• First, the shape file, which is know as a ‘feature class’ and then the file with the data in which is a ‘table’

Shape file

Click on the Geodatabase file

Give it a name

File with data in

Click on Geodatabase file

Give it a name

For the next stage, open ArcMap by clicking here:

Click on the Add Data button, find the Geodatabase and add the contents to ArcMap

Next, join the table to the feature file by creating a join

Right click here and click on Join, the following dialogue box appears

Click on Zone_Code

Browse to the Settlement table

As this table has only a few attributes and Zone_Code has the same structure as the first field chosen, this is automatically filled in

NB: the join fields do not have to have the same name, but they do need to be the same type i.e. string, integer etc

To check the join, right click on Demographics and open the attribute table, as you can see the attribute names have changed to show which attribute comes from which source.

Right click on Demographics, click on Data and then Export. The Export Data dialogue box appears.

Leave entries as their default, click on the open folder icon and browse to where you would like to save the shape file to.

Make sure that the file type is ‘Shapefile’ in the dropdown list box.

A progress bar appears showing the status of the export. When it is finished you are asked whether you want to add the new file to the map as a layer.

Helps with checking. You can give it a proper name, kept here as default name

New shape file

Map the Data........

Function FindLabel ( [Name], [Dist_typ_l] ) if(Dist_typ_l = "Settlement") then FindLabel = [Name] end ifEnd Function

The final map