AWhere, Inc.

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 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). 

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.

Another way that you might create a custom ‘region’ to work with in AWhere is to extract a sub-set of boundaries from an existing map layer.  For example, say you want to create an AWhere Database that encompasses only the geographic extent of the Horn of Africa region.  To start with, you will probably want to get a map layer of the national boundaries of only the countries in the Horn of Africa region.  Well, AWhere Inc. does not have a template data set or Foundation data set for that exact map extent (that is, for only the Horn of Africa)…but you do have everything available to make your own.

You would simply load up the ‘Global Boundaries’ Template data set that came with AWhere, select the countries in the region that you desire (in this case, the Horn of Africa region), and then save those selected features as a wholly new map layer.  Here is how to do that:

·         Start AWhere and load the ‘Global Boundaries’ template (File > Open Database > Templates tab > select ‘Global Boundaries').  You’ll see a map of the world, showing country boundaries.

·         In the Treeview area to the left of the map, expand the ‘Political’ folder, and make sure that the ‘Country’ map layer is selected (highlighted)…because this is the map layer from which you are going to be selecting features, it needs to be highlighted.

·         Use the Zoom In tool  above the map to zoom the map view to your area of interest (only necessary if you cannot see the desired boundaries clearly at the global extent view).

·         From the toolbar above the map, click on the Feature Selection tool , and then use your cursor to select the map features you desire to compose the extent of the map you want to work with…in this example, that would be the countries of the horn of Africa (see below).  They will become highlighted yellow when selected on the map:

·          With the desired map features selected on the map, click on the ‘Save Selected Features as New Layer’ button  above the map.  This will create a new map layer, consisting of only those highlighted features; this new map layer will be placed into a new folder named ‘Selections’ at the bottom of the treeview.  By default, the new map layer in this case is named ‘Country Selected Features’ (but you could rename it to anything you wish…like ‘Horn of Africa Countries’).  Before proceeding, use the ‘Clear Feature Selection’ toolbar button  to clear the features selected from the ‘Country’ map layer.

·         If you now turn off all of the other map layers in the AWhere map window, and leave only that new map layer displayed, this is what you will have:

 ·        Use ‘File > Save As’ to create a new AWhere Database (.awh) file, and this is now your “Horn of Africa” AWhere database; you can now continue to add more data to it, import GPS collected points, connect data tables to it, etc.

Need the sub-national administrative boundaries as well? – You’ll see in the above example image (see top map image) that the ‘Global Boundaries’ template data set also has a ‘First Administrative Level’ map layer…that contains all of the boundaries of the first, sub-national level administrative units for all countries in the world.  If you also would want a map layer of those boundaries for these Horn of Africa countries, you would simply need to do the same steps as above, but you would be displaying and selecting the map features from the ‘First Administrative Level’ map layer, instead of from the ‘Country’ map layer.  It would look like this below (after you have selected them, but before you have saved them to a new map layer).  Then after doing the ‘Save Selected Features as New Layer’, you would have a new map layer consisting of only those highlighted features (i.e. a map layer of the first sub-national level administrative boundaries for all of the countries in the Horn of Africa region). 

Delete the Originals if you wish - After you have done that, you could just delete the original ‘Country’ and ‘First Administrative Level’ map layers that cover the full extent of the world, because you are not interested in those areas outside of the Horn of Africa region for this particular AWhere database…you only need those ‘Horn of Africa’ layers.  (Note that you are not actually deleting the ‘Global Boundaries’ template data set from your computer, you can always load it again if needed.  Remember, you saved this all to a new 'AWhere Database (.awh)...see last bulleted point above.  The original 'Global Boundaries' template that you loaded to get you started is left un-changed.  Click here for more clarification on that if needed.)

(By the way, if you are ever going to need to map data to sub-national administrative boundaries around the world...take a look at this forum post for tips on avoiding pitfalls that can be prevalent.)

You could do the Same for the U.S. - Say you wanted a map layer that delineates only the spatial extent of the states in the western half of the U.S.  You would load one of the ‘USA Boundaries’ templates (installed with AWhere)…select the states that are within the spatial extent you desire, and save the selected states as a new layer...same concept as that described in the procedure above.