Maptitude Help / Creating and Editing Geographic Files

Creating and Editing Geographic Files

Maptitude uses a geographic file to store the locations and shapes of features in a map layer. You can add, delete, or change the features in a geographic file using editing tools and the mouse. You can also create new, empty geographic files to store point, line, or area features, and then use the editing tools and the mouse to add new features to them. When you edit geographic features, you draw or adjust the way the features look on the screen, and Maptitude figures out how to store the information. You can edit with your mouse or with a digitizing tablet.

Maptitude supports editing of Esri Shapefiles, as long as they do not have a native Esri index. Maptitude, with ArcGIS installed, does support editing of Esri Shapefiles with a native Esri indices, as well as editing of features in Esri personal geodatabases, file geodatabases, and databases accessed via ArcSDE.

Maptitude lets you export geographic files into formats that can be used with many other programs. Maptitude also imports data from many other programs and published data files. For a complete description of these capabilities, see Managing Geographic Files.

You can also use aerial photographs, satellite images, or scanned versions of paper maps, including those available over the internet from USGS, Virtual Earth, and Google Maps, to assist you in editing. For more information, see Using Images as Map Layers.

Freehand items created with the drawing tools cannot be edited with the geographic editing tools. Freehand items are stored in the map file, not a geographic file. To edit freehand items, see Working with Freehand Items.

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