Editing Feature Attributes and Drawing Styles

When a single area, line, or point feature is selected, there is an EDIT option on the right-click popup menu allowing you to edit that feature (i.e. EDIT-Area Feature, EDIT-Line Feature, or EDIT-Point Feature). Additional menus are available for editing the attributes and styles of selected features, in addition to performing analysis and measurement functions in the right-click Digitizer menus.

Selecting that option displays the Modify Feature Info dialog which allows you to modify the Name, Feature Type, Drawing Style, and Attributes for the selected feature. You can also access this dialog by double-clicking on a feature.

For additional options, select the feature with digitizer and right-click to Attribute/ Style Functions options to access the menu (see below).


Copy Attributes Between Overlapping/Nearby Features

Allows you to copy Attributes from one feature to another. This displays a dialog that allows you to select which types of selected/loaded features to copy attributes between and which attributes to copy. For more information see Adding Attributes to Features from Other Features

Add/Update the Measure Attributes of Selected Feature(s)

Adds and updates the Measure Attributes of selected feature. Useful for when vertex, line or area features have been edited and Measurement values need to be recalculated.  

Add Attributes with Count of Points and Lines in Selected Area(s)…

Select area feature to add a count of point and line features in the selected area feature as an Attribute to the selected Area Feature. The new Attributes will appear as POINT_COUNT for contained points and LINE_COUNT for contained lines.

Add Address Information from Roads to Selected Points...

With a road data set loaded, select points to add the address information from the roads layer to the points. Once selected, you will be asked to define the maximum distance the point feature can be from the line feature to copy the address from it in the Specify Distance dialog (below).

A pop-up message will confirm that the Address attribute(s) have been added to the selected points. Clicking the modified point with the Feature Info Tool will confirm that the Road information has been successfully added to the point.

Add Coordinate Attributes to Selected Lines and Points

Will add a coordinate attribute to selected feature.

Add Style Attributes to Selected Feature(s)

Adds an Attribute for Point, Line or Area Style.

Calculate Elevation/Slope Stats for Selected Feature(s)...

When elevation data is loaded, will calculate Elevation/Slope Statistics for selected features.

Calculate/Copy Attributes for Feature Selection

This allows you to create a new attribute value (or update an existing one) by copying the value of some attribute, performing a mathematical operation either between two attributes or an attribute and some number, or to append some text string to a value when Simple Calculation is selected.

The dialog below is displayed when you select this option to allow you to set it up:   

Selecting Use Formula Calculation option enables the use of additional formulas.

Available Attributes: User may select an attribute to insert into the current formula (use the Insert button to the right)

Available Functions: User may select a function template to insert into the current formula, which includes the function name and dummy parameters where they're expected. Insert the function using the button immediately to the right. Changing the current function in the list displays a function description in the read-only control directly below the function selector.

Enter Formula to Use: An edit control where the user types in the formula that they require.

Insertions from the Available Attributes and Available Functions drop downs determine the current insertion point in this control, and replace any current selection. As changes are made to the formula, a status is updated in the Status control immediately below.

Status: Indicates the status of the current formula. If the formula is non-empty, it is evaluated for correctness. If there is no error, then the status will be 'OK'. Otherwise, if there is an error an indication of what the error is displayed. In addition, if there is no error, then the dialog used the current feature in whatever feature collection is being considered to evaluate the value that the formula would compute, as a sample. This is shown below the status.

Use the 'Insert' button to the right of the selected Function to insert a function to use and the 'Insert' button to the right of Available Attributes to add the Attribute name to the string. If the formula is invalid or empty, the 'Calculate' button is disabled. Clicking 'Calculate' will apply the formula to the feature collection.

Create Quiver Plot (Direction Vectors) from selected points...

Choose this option with points selected to create a Quiver Plot. The Quiver Plot (Direction Vector) Options dialog (below) allows the user to specify the arrow symbol and attributes to be used when displaying point data as a quiver (arrow) plot. The arrow will point in the direction calculated from the attributes.  The size of the arrow will be scaled relative to the largest magnitude value.  If no magnitude is specified, all of the arrows will be the same size.

Specify the symbol to use by choosing an arrow symbol from the Arrow Symbol list.



Use a UV Vector - When this option is chosen, the specified attributes must contain a UV vector.  The U component is the vector value in the X direction.  The V component is the vector value in the Y direction.  These two values will be used to compute the direction and magnitude of the vector.

Use Direction and Magnitude - When this option is chosen, the user must choose an attribute containing the direction (in degrees, relative to 0 pointing at the top of the map, drawn clockwise), and another attribute containing the magnitude.  The magnitude is optional.

Apply Elevations from Terrain Layers to Selected Feature(s)

Requires elevation data (like a DEM) to be loaded into the workspace. The elevation of the top most elevation layer will be applied to the selected feature at each vertex. The elevation value of the feature will be applied using the resampling method of the top most terrain layer. For elevation layers the resampling method is bilinear interpolation by default, so the elevation at each vertex will be calculated using bilinear interpolation.

Change the interpolation method in the display settings of the top most elevation layer to apply elevations using a different method of calculation.

Load Local/Web Files from an Attribute of Selected Features

Will load local files or a URL referenced in an Attribute of Selected Feature.

Set Text Color

When a point, line or area feature with a label is selected, tho option may be used to quickly change the color of the label's text. Selecting this option will populate Global Mapper's color picker.

When you add or edit new attributes, the dialog that appears includes drop-downs for both the attribute name and value showing previously entered names and values for easy selection. These values are stored in an easy to edit text file named attr_previous_vals.txt in your setting file path (see Help-> About dialog for this location).

The format is described in the file so you can set this up initially with values for particular customers if you don't want to wait to have it filled in as it's used. When more than one area, line, and/or point feature is selected, there is an option on the right-click popup menu allowing you to edit the selected features. Selecting that option displays a dialog which allows you to modify the Name, Feature Type, Feature Layer, and Drawing Style, and Attributes for the selected features.

*When editing multiple features, if some features use a custom description and others do not, the box will be filed with a light grey check mark and the text field will be empty and disabled.  Checking or clearing the check box will set or clear the custom description for all selected features.