MGIC Meeting - September 16, 2000
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Some Tricks for Attractive ArcView Layouts

Jim Scace, jscace@pvpc.org
Pioneer Valley Planning Commission
26 Central Street, West Springfield, MA 01089
 

  1. Creating an attractive table for ArcView

    2.  
    1. Download and install the Xtools Extension from ESRI’s Web site.
    2. Install a Postscript Printer in WinNT. (My favorite is the Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600)
    3. In ArcView, create an Excel Spread Sheet from a feature attribute table using Xtools


      4. In ArcView, highlight the theme; Click on Theme/Table to open the attribute table. In AV tables, highlight the table and Click on Xtools/Export to an Excel SpreadSheet. Xtools may ask where Excel is. Xtools will also give you a list of items/fields/columns to export.


       

    4. Edit the Excel Spread Sheet

      5. To something more attractive like this:


       
       

    5. Print the spreadsheet to the Postscript Printer


      6.  
    6. May need to edit the EPS file before inserting it into an ArcView Layout.
      Open the EPS file in WordPad. The first lines should look something like this:

      7. %!PS-Adobe-3.0
      %%Title: WestSpringfieldBuildoutRawData.xls
      %%Creator: Windows NT 4.0
      %%CreationDate: 9:52 9/11/2000
      %%Pages: (atend)
      %%BoundingBox: 13 13 600 780

      If the first two lines look like this, edit them out and save (in WordPad):
      _%-12345X@PJL JOB
      @PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = POSTSCRIPT
      %!PS-Adobe-3.0
      etc
      etc
       
       

    7. Insert the EPS file into the ArcView Layout with the Picture Frame tool:


      8.  
       
    8. The file will come across with all the color and fonts you put in

      9. In this case, I inserted the spread sheet, created a legend with the Legend Tool Extension, did multiple ungroups of the legend, and dragged and resized the individual zoning district legends on top of the spreadsheet. This "Print to a Postscript Printer file" trick works with MOST WinNT programs. Some need editing of the eps file first few lines and some don’t.

      NOTE: Sometimes this creates the wonderful ESRI feature "Segmentation Error". I don’t know why. To get around this segmentation error, I have loaded the offending


     
  2. Street Names

    3.  
    1. Using MHD Roads ANNO.STS…
      1. Create a copy of the MHD Roads coverage for the town (Roadanno).
      2. Clean up Anno.sts in ARCEDIT. Use the ROAD Centerline coverage as the base for alignment. (You could copy ANNO.STS to the town centerline coverage)
      3. When satisfied with the appearance of ANNO.STS in ArcEdit, select all the annotation and CALC $SYMBOL = 0. This allows arcview to change the font and font size as desired.
      4. Copy and Paste the Street Names theme into new views.

        5.  
    2. Using Network
      1. Create a Route using STREET_NAME, using the Arc Command:

        2. ARCROUTE <incover> NAMES STREET_NAME STREET_NAME # # NOBLANKS
        Then in ArcView, label the routes with your choice of font and font size. Make sure that ‘Scale labels’ is checked and ‘Label Only Features in the View Extent" and "Remove Duplicates" are not checked.
         
         
  3. Highway Shields

    4.  
    1. Install the free fonts and marker sets for Massachusetts from Data DejaView.
      1. These fonts and marker sets have the complete Massachusetts highway shield set. I have a point coverage created from a Mass Highway coverage that links on the Route_Number field to create colored or black and white Route Number markers. As far as I know, the marker set is complete as of 1999.

        2.  
      2. Contact me at jscace@pvpc.org or the author at:
        Jim Mossman E-Mail: jmossman@wcvt.com
        Data Deja View
        232 South Main Street
        Northfield, VT 05663
        Phone: 802-485-7542 evenings before 10 pm eastern time.
         
         
  4. Saving and reusing your hard work with ArcView ODB Extension (v1.3)


    5. After you have carefully created a single view with nice looking street name annotation, you can copy and paste that theme from one view to another in the same project. But what of other projects?

    If you have the Arcview ODB extension, you can do the following:

    1. Highlight the Street Annotation theme in a view you like.
    2. Copy it.
    3. Create a new view (make sure it has the same map and distance units).
    4. Paste the theme into the view.
    5. Go to the Project Window and highlight the new view.
    6. The ODB extension adds a SAVE/RESTORE menu at the top of the page. Click that and SAVE.
    7. Give the saved object an 8 character name and the .odb extension. Like RD_NAME.odb
    8. Now, you can load that view into any project and copy and paste the street names theme into new views.


    Note: This will work as long as the coverage or shape file is left in the original directory. If you move it, you will have to edit RD_NAME.odb with wordpad to correct the path.

    2nd Note: The ODB extension is buggy. It fails occasionally and very often gives you a stream of error messages but still works. It fails most on save and restore of complex views and/or layouts. So KISS.
     
     

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