Many AWhere users do not want to be limited or restricted to working only with map layers of existing political boundaries (e.g. states, counties, districts, etc). They want to create their own (customized) map layers that show delineated boundaries specific to their needs, such as a company’s sales territories (e.g. a ‘sales territory’ might be an area encompassing a group of neighboring counties, or groupings of zip codes...though there are some caveats to mapping with zip codes), or maybe you want to create a map layer representing ‘areas of influence’. How would you create a new map layer with new boundaries representing your own customized, delineated ‘areas’?
First, let's clarify what you cannot do in AWhere…you cannot do a ‘free-hand’ drawing in the map window (i.e. digitizing) to ‘draw’ your own map with whatever boundaries, where-ever you desire. So, know up front that is not possible. But, in most instances, that is not what is required.
Now, what you can do...you can take an existing map layer and modify that map layer to create new map features based on the existing map features in the map layer. There are two specific ways of doing that which will be covered here…those are Aggregation and Buffering.
Aggregation – AWhere has the ‘Aggregate Add-In’ available (it is installed with AWhere Professional, but not with AWhere Express…however, AWhere Express users can download this Add-In from our website for free). This add-in will perform an aggregation on an existing polygon map layer…this is a process of creating new, larger polygons by dissolving the internal boundaries of smaller, neighboring polygons (see example image below).
An aggregation cannot be performed on a point map layer nor on a line map layer…only on a polygon map layer (click here to read a forum post replying to a user's question about why points can’t be aggregated, as well as a work-around). The input polygon map layer could have polygons representing any geographic entities…states, counties, districts, census tracks, countries, anything. What is required for the aggregation to take place is that the input polygon map layer needs to include at least one field (or ‘attribute’), the values of which assign each map feature to a distinct grouping (i.e. ‘territory’). Then, you would aggregate based upon the values in that field…that is, each polygon with the territory value ‘A’ would be aggregated together…each polygon with the territory value ‘B’ would be aggregated together…etc. If such a field does not already inherently exist in the polygon map layer that you are wanting to aggregate, you will need to (before the aggregation) edit the attribute table of the map layer to create such a field*.
In the example above, you can see that the counties of Massachusetts were each assigned to a given ‘Territory’ (as identified by the label on each county in the top map image). These territory assignments were accomplished by editing the county map layer’s attribute table*… a new field was created, and values for that field were entered manually (either A, B, C, D, or E) for each county. (Note that you don’t necessarily have to call the territories ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, etc, nor do you necessarily need to have the map labeled; that is just done to help you better understand what is happening in this example.) Performing an aggregation based upon the values in that new field results in the map layer shown in the second map image above…you now have a new ‘Territory’ map layer. What then? Well now that you have a new map layer representing your own customized territories, you can now establish data connections to that map layer. If you have a spreadsheet holding data for each territory, you can connect that spreadsheet to this new map layer, thereby allowing you visualize that data on the map. Click here to read more about 'Data Connections' in AWhere.
* Refer to the Aggregate Add-In’s helpfile, which is accessed via the Aggregate Add-In’s interface, for information on ways to assign polygon features to specific ‘groupings’ for use in an aggregation. There is a good visual example of how an aggregation works, and what you must do to set up an aggregation operation.
Buffering – AWhere (Express and Pro) comes installed with the ‘Buffer Tool’, it will allow you to place a ‘buffer’ of any distance (whatever distance you define) around all of, or a selection of, features in a given map layer. You can buffer points, lines, or polygons. Regardless of the input layer type (point, line, or polygon), the output of a buffer operation is a new polygon map layer. The polygons in the output map layer will represent the buffered area around each input feature that you buffered. In the case of creating territories, or maybe areas-of-influence, you could buffer, for example, a point layer of stores or warehouses out to a certain distance, and the output map layer will be a map layer containing circles around each point in the input layer. In the example below, the top map image shows five point locations (represented by the red triangles); you could imagine that this is a point map layer that you have created by geo-referencing some addresses of interest to you (e.g. warehouse or distribution center locations), and imported those into AWhere to create a point map layer showing those locations. Then, for this example, a buffer of 15 miles was applied to all of them, resulting in the map layer shown in the bottom map image directly below. (Note, the state boundary of Massachusetts does not play a part in the buffer operation, it is shown here only for your visual reference; it would not actually be part of the output.) Refer to the main AWhere helpfile from AWhere’s Help menu, for more on how to perform Buffering.
Further to this, if you were to now turn on the Microsoft Virtual Earth Add-In (installed with AWhere), you can now visualize what towns, cities and transportation lines fall within your newly buffered zones. The map image below shows a view of the AWhere map window, zoomed to the two northeastern-most buffered circles (from above), and the Virtual Earth view is turned on (the buffered circles have been made transparent so that you can see the Virtual Earth view underneath). You turn on the Virtual Earth view by selecting “On” from the menu next to the words ‘Virtual Earth’ in the main AWhere toolbar.
