Here’s another note to myself that is best kept in a place I won’t lose it – on my blog.
I made the switch to ArcGIS 10.0 earlier this year as I began work on a new project utilizing GIS, hoping there would be a ton of great features that would save me time. I think I’ve spent more time looking up solutions to basic issues than any version before. Today’s frustration – how to create a new field in my attribute table so I can calculate the areas of newly generated polygons, and display it out to my preferred number of decimal places. I kept trying to create a “long integer” field, and then adjust the number of decimal places after I ran the “calculate geometry” function. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the decimals to display.
The solution:
When you create your new field in your attribute table, select “Double” as the type. You don’t need to set anything for the precision and scale – just hit okay. Then start editing the data layer, and right click on the properties. Select the “…” button, which will allow you to change the number of decimals that are displayed. That simple.
My beef with the support information for ESRI’s GIS program is that it is written only for advanced users. People like me that never get into the more complicated functions, and who don’t write their own script seem to be completely ignored by ESRI’s help and support information. It’s like a kid asking why a leaf turns yellow in the fall and having a parent start diagramming all of the biological cycles of a plant at the cellular level.
