ET GeoWizards 12 uses Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) for reading and writing spatial data. All functions
accept as input and produce output in Shapefile or File Geodatabase (File GDB) which are the most common spatial data
formats and most GIS products can read/write one or both data formats.
In order to use your spatial data in the ET GeoWizards functions you need to convert it to Shapefile or File GDB first
Shapefile
consists of several files. The first 3 listed below are
compulsory and the forth is very important if the data is to be used for
spatial analysis.
*.shp - containing the geometry information
.dbf - containing the attribute information
.shx - positional index
.prj - contains the coordinate system and projection information of the data
etc.
ET GeoWizards accepts as input the full name of the .shp
file ( for example c:\data\input.shp" ) and treats all the files with the
same name and different extension as a single dataset. In a similar fashion
if the user specifies as an output the full name to a .shp file (for example
c:\data\output.shp") the functions of ET GeoWizards will produce a full set
of files comprising a Shapefile dataset.
Supports Z and M (measures) and is suitable for
representing 3D geometries and used in linear referencing tasks.
Does not support true curves. The curves are
approximated using linear segments.
The attributes are stored in a DBF file. Maximum length of
field names - 10 characters
File Geodatabase (File GDB)
The Esri File Geodatabase is a
collection of data layers stored in a file system. The File GDB format has
emerged as a very common format for storing and exchanging spatial data. A File
GDB is a folder that ends with .gdb extension.
ET GeoWizards accepts as input the full name of a layer
stored in File GDB ( for example c:\data\myData.gdb\input" ). The
output is specified in a similar way (for example
c:\data\myData.gdb\output.")
Supports Z and M (measures) and is suitable for
representing 3D geometries and used in linear referencing tasks.
Supports true curves. The current version of GDAL (2.1)
cannot read true curves stored in File GDB. As a result ET GeoWizards 12.0
does not support true curves.
ET GeoWizards will read File Geodatabases created with
ArcGIS 10.0 and above. Previous versions are not supported by GDAL.
ET GeoWizards can create a new File GDB
A Feature Dataset is a subfolder in the File GDB folder
(for example c:\data\myData.gdb\myNetwork\layer1" ). A Feature Dataset
is normally used to group layers for a specific purpose. With ET GeoWizards
it is possible to create a Feature Dataset and store the output data in it.
It is however not recommended (and sometime not possible) to save output
layers in a Feature Dataset created in ArcGIS).
Temporary feature classes.
Many of the functions of ET GeoWizards perform complex spatial operations and in the process need to create
one or more intermediate datasets. The temporary datasets can be stored in
Shapefiles or File GDB. The location (temp folder) for storing temp datasets can be set using the ET GeoWizards Main
Dialog ==> Settings). If the temp folder has not be set Et GeoWizards
sets it to "c:\temp\ET_Temp".
Maintenance of the temp folder
All functions are designed to maintain the ET GeoWizards folder by removing the intermediate feature classes
after completion. In some cases however some of the
functions cannot delete the intermediate datasets. This might cause the
size of the temporary folder to grow after long use of the software. The easiest way to avoid problems
with large temp folder is simply to delete the contents of this folder on regular basis.