Maptitude Help / Geocoding / Locate Commands

Locate Commands

Maptitude offers you several ways to locate your data:

Create-a-Map Wizard helps you by examining your data and suggesting possible ways to join your data to a map or to locate each record as a point on the map. Create-a-Map Wizard looks for fields with recognizable names, and gives you some choices of ways to display your data on a map. It is good for quick or simple tasks, such as locating most of your records by address. For more information, see Using Create-a-Map Wizard.
The Locate commands give you more options when locating your data, so that you can handle more complex tasks and fine tune the way the records are located. The Locate commands are described in this chapter.

Maptitude has many commands that automatically locate points. Each command uses a different method to identify the location where points should be placed on the map, with varying degrees of precision. In addition, you can manually locate points.

The commands that are available will vary somewhat depending on the regional data that you have installed. For example, the Locate by Postal Code command that is available in most regions is called Locate by ZIP Code if you are using the United States country package. For information on all of the specific locate commands available with your country package, see “Locating Your Data on a Map” in the Regional Help.

Here is a summary of the most common locate commands and how they work:

Locate by...	What it does
Address	Uses street address fields in your data to set the locations based on a reference file of streets or a location index for addresses
ZIP Code/Postal Code	Uses ZIP/Postal Codes in your data to set the locations scattered inside ZIP/Postal Code areas, or at or near ZIP/Postal Code points
City/Town/Suburb	Uses city and state/province/district fields in your data to set the locations at or near city points for records within your installed region data
World City	Uses city and country fields in your data to set the locations at or near points in the World Gazetteer geographic file
Value	Uses one or more fields from your data, such as sales territory or store, to look up corresponding map features and set the locations
Coordinate	Uses coordinate information that is stored in your data to set the locations
Pointing	Allows you to manually place or reposition records on your map

TIP: You can use the Locate Wizard to run several passes at once and locate your data using the best possible method.

All of these commands create or add to a point geographic file, shown as a map layer, with one point for each record in your file. The point layer will include all of your data from the original source. Records that Maptitude successfully locates will have a coordinate (longitude and latitude). When Maptitude is finished locating your records, it displays them in a map so that you can see where they are located, and displays a dataview that shows the location of each point. Maptitude also creates a selection set for any records that were not found. You can choose to see this selection set in the dataview, and you can use this selection set to locate just the records that were not found using a different method.

Choosing Which Locate Command to Use

There are a number of factors to consider when you are deciding which command to use:

If your database contains a coordinate for each record, use Locate by Coordinate.
If your database has street address information and you have a Street file for that country, use Locate by Address.
If your database does not have street addresses but does have postal codes, use Locate by ZIP Code/Postal Code. You can also use this method if you do not require street-level accuracy because you will be creating maps at a state or national scale.
If the database has cities and states/provinces/districts within your installed data region, use Locate by City/Suburb/Town.
If your database can be located based on other geographic files, use Locate by Value.
If you know where a record should be placed or repositioned on the map, use Locate by Pointing.

Depending on the type of data you have in your file, using one Locate command may not be enough to locate all the records. In that case, you can use the same Locate command with other settings, or another Locate command, to locate records that were not found. For example:

Use Locate by Address for all the records that have address information
Use Locate by ZIP Code/Postal Code for records that have no address but do have postal code information (e.g., post office box addresses)
Use Locate by City/Suburb/Town for records that have city and state/province/district information and are within your installed geographic region
Use Locate by World City for records that have city and country information and are located outside your installed geographic region
Use Locate by Value for remaining records that are located outside of your region or that have neither address nor postal code fields
Use Locate by Pointing for the remaining records whose location you know

The Tools>Locate>Locate Wizard command can speed this process up for you. When you use the Locate Wizard, it will automatically parse your data and locate by address, postal code, and/or city for you. When complete, the located data will indicate the method used to locate the records. Then you can locate any remaining records using another method.