Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html Hi Steve: I am afraid I came too late, after Peter and Jim's answers and advice's, mainly because we are down here, in Brazil, your messages usually came in when I can not participate. Anyway, I have something that I would like to share, because I use it a lot, and always hear a big Oh! followed by a How did you do that?. It is a powerful combination of Areas of Influence, and Merge by Value, and I totally agree with Peter that this commands are quite more powerful than users usually imagine. I think it would be useful for a lot of you, if you have not think about to combine this, and specially if you want to do exactly as Steve was thinking at the beginning, that is obtain Areas from a bunch of points. Believe me, it works incredible well for points belonging to certain classes that you want to express as a cluster, delimited inside a closed polygon. You will do: 1) Make your point layer the current layer. 2) Be sure you have a Code Number or a String in a Field that you can use as a geographic identifier, such as ZIP Codes starting with 282 (use the substring function to create a 3 Digit Zip Code, or make a copy of this column and then modify the structure to only 3 characters), or Vendor Area Manager Names (Peter, Paul and Mary... etc.), or whatever points, just points. 3) Now use the Areas of Influence command over your points, do not forget to use the Attribute option and Copy for the Field you decide will be your area identifier (usually a string, but if it is a number you can still use the copy option) 4) Once you have your Areas of Influence map (we call this Voronoi, or Thiessen polygons), you can do several things, I always do two before going to merge: Make a Color theme using the Geographic ID Field (Vendor Names or 3 Digit ZIP's, Districts, Regions, or whatever is your interest, then I can "see" how the merged map will go, be sure that all the points that are in the same coordinate (very common in big point georeferenced databases) have the same Regional Attribute. Wen you made the Areas of Influence the Number of Points Field is automatically created and filled out (thanks Caliper!). 5) Usually I repeat the step 4 several times, specially if I have to create "catalytic" or "dummy" points to "push" the outer limit out of the big circle which is created around the points. (Peter, here comes a wish, why don't you include an option with the possibility of set the number of meters or Km or miles the user want's out of the location of the outer points, in order to not be necessary to create the "dummy" points). 6) Once you are satisfied with the results of step 5, then is time to apply the Merge by Value, taking advantage of all the facilities so well described by Peter and Jim Stone, including the use of overlay, lets say with demographic data. 7) Your area map is done!. Use again Color theme and other thematic cartography methods to analyze the area of study. Be happy. I hope this "recipe" could be helpful to some of you. Any comments and suggestions are welcome. Regards from deep south (with 36 Celsius, very hot summer in São Paulo). Reinaldo Steve-Hendel wrote: > Maptitude - http://research.umbc.edu/~roswell/maptitude.html > > Hello to everyone. I have been a fan of Maptitude for a long time, > since it is cheap. powerful, and relatively easy to use. We are not yet > using it for any production applications here at Office Depot, but I and > some others occasionally use it for desktop work. Other departments are > using MapInfo and formerly Atlas GIS as they have connections with other > vendors whose products we use. > > We often create ZIP code area maps denoting things like sales, > market potential and market penetration. Maptitude provides some great data > on USPS 5-digit ZIP code areas and ZIP code centroids. But you can't create > an area map for point data, which is what the ZIP centroids are. My wish is > that there be a way, inside of Maptitude, to include data for enclosed point > ZIP codes in their enclosing ZIP areas. > > For example, in Charlotte NC, the area ZIP 28208 encloses thirteen > point ZIPSs (28219, 28228, 28240, 28254, 28258, 28260, 28265, 28266, 28272, > 28275, 28289, 28290, and 28296). We have sales data for each of these 14 > ZIP codes, as that is provided by the customer address. Yet we have area > data and demographic information only for the area ZIP 28208. Is there a > way, without external processing, that we can specify to have point ZIP data > mapped into the area ZIP in which the point ZIPs are enclosed? If not, > please add it to the wish list. > > Thanks. This is a most interesting, active, and helpful list. I am > happy to finally be able to contribute, if only a question. Maybe in the > future, I can help provide some answers too. > > Steve Hendel > Director - Systems Development > Office Depot > 2200 Old Germantown Rd > Delray Beach FL 33445-8299 > 561-438-1321 > > ______________________________________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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