makeshapes {aspace}R Documentation

Builder of ESRI Shapefiles

Description

This function is a basic ESRI Shapefile builder. The SDD, SDE, and MCP functions included in this library produce ASCII output files that represent the input required for this function. However, any similarly formatted file will also work. This function provides capabilities for converting the centrographic and geometric summary measures of geographical extent and dispersion into GIS databases for further cartographic rendering and analysis.

Usage

makeshapes(asciiname = "SDD_Output.txt", headerskip = 0, outname = "Test", verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

asciiname The name of the ASCII file containing coordinate info. input to the shape building procedure
headerskip An integer to indicate how many lines of the ASCII file to skip at the top if a header has been added
outname The name of the output Shapefile. Do not use spaces or illegal filename characters.
verbose Boolean: Set to TRUE if extended feedback to the standard output is required

Details

The level of detail recorded in the Shapefile will be determined by the weed tolerance of points defining the shapes in the input ASCII file.

Value

The result is an ESRI format Shapefile containing 3 files (.shp, .dbf, .shx). The base filename will be that specified by the parameter outname.

Note

Currently, the unique identifier is the only attribute that separates polygon objects within the Shapefile. Once the Shapefile is built, a collection of other attributes can be joined to the database via the unique identifier.

Author(s)

Tarmo K. Remmel with significant help from Rick Reeves - NCEAS

See Also

calc_sdd, calc_sde, calc_mcp

Examples

  calc_sdd(weights=NULL)
  makeshapes(asciiname="SDD_Output.txt", headerskip=0, outname="Test", verbose=TRUE)

[Package aspace version 1.2 Index]