Generating land areas

The Generate Land Areas tool, when used for an Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC), can improve production efficiency. When creating a new cell, the Generate Land Areas tool automates the creation of polygon land area features from existing line work contained in COALNE, M_COVR, and other feature classes. All autogenerated land areas will be adjacent to the defined coastline feature. You must define the metadata feature so that the Generate Land Areas tool can incorporate the cell extent. Depth contour features need to be defined so that the tool can determine which side of the coastline feature to build the land areas. The Generate Land Areas tool was designed for new cell production in the desktop production environment but can be used in limited scope to maintain existing data in the enterprise production environment. When maintaining existing cell data, the tool performs the following edit actions as it creates land areas:

• Deletes existing land areas that are not supported by the defined coastline features
• Replaces land areas that are partially supported by the defined coastline features with a new land area that is fully supported by the coastline feature

Note:

When working in the NIS database (or the central data repository), the Generate Land Areas tool should be run using the current extent or selected set and the metadata feature class will have to be manually defined. To manually define the Metadata feature class, select or create a polygon feature that covers the area you want to update. Using the SQL input, identify the feature using its ObjectID, for example, ObjectID = 12345.

Steps:

1. Start ArcMap.
2. On the main menu, click Customize > Toolbars > Production Editing.
3. On the main menu, click Customize > Toolbars > Nautical.
4. Click the Production Start Editing button on the Production Editing toolbar.
   Note:

   The Manage Features and Create Attributes, Update Attributes, or Metadata Attributes windows automatically appear when you start an edit session using the Production Start Editing tool.

   Tip:

   If the Create Attributes, Update Attributes, or Metadata Attributes window does not appear when you start an edit session, click the Show/Hide Attributes button on the Manage Features window.

5. On the Nautical toolbar, click Nautical > Generate Land Areas.

   The Generate Land Areas dialog box appears with many of the fields already populated.

   Note:

   The Generate Land Areas tool autopopulates the parameters with S-57 defined land area, metadata, and depth contour features. However, you can populate these fields with the features of your choice.

6. If necessary, click the Land Area Feature Class arrow to define a different feature/subtype to hold the output Land Area features.
7. Click the Coastline Feature Class drop-down arrow and choose the line feature class you want to use for coastlines, or accept the autopopulated value.
8. Optionally, build a SQL query under the Coastline Feature Class field to further define your coastline feature.
9. Click the Metadata Feature Class drop-down arrow to choose a different area feature to represent the metadata feature, or accept the autopopulated value.
10. Optionally, build a SQL query under the Metadata Feature Class field to further define your metadata feature.
11. Optionally, click the Other Feature Classes drop-down arrow to add multiple line and area features that are used during the generate land areas process.

    For example, if your coastline feature is split by a building area feature, you could define the building area in the Other Feature Classes list so your land areas would be continuous when generated.

12. Click the Depth Contour Feature Class drop-down arrow to define a different depth contour feature, or accept the default feature.
13. Optionally, build a SQL query under the Depth Contour Feature Class field to further define your depth contour field.
14. Choose an option in the Area of Interest area.
    • Selected Set—The process is limited to evaluate only the selected linear features when generating land areas.
    • Current Extent—The process limits the operation of the tool to those features displayed in the current extent.
    • Query Definition—The process only runs on features that meet the query definitions established for each feature class used by the process.
    • Full Database—The process runs on all the data present in the GDB and generates land areas appropriately.
15. Click OK.

    A status dialog box appears showing you the generate land areas process.

    When the process is complete, a message box appears informing you whether the process was successful or not and asks if you want to review the log file.

16. Click Yes or No.
    Note:

    Log files are stored in the following location:

    • On Windows XP, log files are written to <Installation location>\Documents and Settings\<User Login>\Application Data\ESRI\Production10.0\Nautical\LogFiles\<Name of Process>.
    • On Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, log files are written to <Installation location>\Users\<UserLogin>\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Production10.0\NAUTICAL\LogFiles\<Name of Process>.