Symbology  Contents  Next

It is possible to build the symbology you want to use for your project in ArcGIS or ArcView and export it to the .apl file for the layer. None of the customization in the .apl file will be lost; the export process simply overwrites the symbology section. Or, if you are brave, symbology can be changed with a text editor.

Included in the ArcPad install folder of ArcPad 6 are two folders called apTools3 and apTools8. In these folders are extensions for export tools that are usable in either ArcView 3.x or ArcGIS 8.x. Follow these steps:

1)   Install the extension you need (see below)

2)   Start your version of Arc

3)   Add the shapefile for which you want to create new symbology

4)   Create the symbology by adding a feature for every attribute you want to symbolize by, that is, every linetype, structure type, or unit. Choose simple colored shapes or marker symbols from one or two fonts for point features and solid colored lines for line features. ArcPad does not support dashed or dotted lines.

5)   Click on the ‘Export Symbology’ tool.

6)   Browse to the .apl file of the shapefile for which you are creating symbology and open it in a text editor. Find occurrence of the term ‘font=’ and record the font that follows. You need to make sure those fonts are correctly installed on your PDA. Go to C:\WINNT\Fonts (C:\Windows\Fonts for XP), find the fonts and drag and drop them into the \Windows\Fonts folder on your PDA. Pasting the files will not work.

7)   If you have defined a point symbology that requires rotation of marker symbols, you will have to add this information manually to the .apl file. Find the XML element called <VALUEMAPRENDERER and add these properties, rotationfield="AZI" rotationtype="geographic”.

8)   Back in ArcPad, be sure to go to the Symbology tab of the layer’s properties (fourth icon from the top right in the layers dialog) and check ‘Use Symbology’.

Installing a dll button command in ArcGIS (I don’t know how for ArcView, sorry)

First, register the dll with your computer. There are two ways to do this. The first is to go to Start>Run and pasting in this line : regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\ArcPad\apTools8\apTools8.dll”. Change the file path as needed to reflect where the dll is residing. Another way is to go to C:\arcgis\arcexe83\ArcObjects Developer Kit\Utilities if you have the Developer Kit installed and double-click on the file called “reg_in_menu.reg”. This installs registration options on the right-click menu when you right-click on any dll. Now go to where the apTools8.dll is, right-click on it and choose ‘Register’ or ‘Register (silent)’.

Second, open ArcMap and go to Tools>Customize. Click on the ‘Commands’ tab and click on ‘Add from file’. Browse to apTools8.dll and select it. Three commands will appear in the right-hand window. Click on Export Symbology and drag it to any toolbar.

Defining symbology with a text editor

Open the XML layer definition (.apl) file with WordPad, gedit, or similar, and scroll down to the section that starts

<VALUEMAPRENDERER

Note that this section contains several <EXACT ...> ... </EXACT> statements. These statements can be edited, or copied and edited.

The revised EXACT statements must be in strict ASCII order or your changes are likely to be ineffectual. The first EXACT statement should define symbolization for a null value. The EXACT statements should be followed by an OTHER statement.

If you mangle the syntax of the .apl file, GDA may behave in unpredictable ways. For a first-order check on XML syntax, try viewing the file with a browser such as Firefox. A syntactically correct file will be viewable. Internet Explorer 6 does not display XML.

Back to top  Contents  Next