The ArcPad Team Blog

Unofficial stuff from the team behind the World's leading mobile GIS platform

Monday, April 16, 2012

Clone, Copy/Paste or Convert Features










Many people have often asked “How can I copy/paste with ArcPad?” or “Can I convert features from one feature type to another such as points to polylines?”

Unfortunately you cannot do this out of the box but with a bit of scripting knowledge you certainly can. The clever developers here at ArcPad central provided a scripting method call CLONE, which enables you to build a collection of points and then create the new feature.
Some scenarios might be:
  • Create a custom Multi-Select tool
  • Convert an entire point featureclass to a single Polyline or Polygon
  • Convert a Polygon boundary to a Line Perimeter and point file for vertices
  • Copy a Polygon feature from a hidden reference layer to an editable layer polygon layer

If you check out the link there is a sample on the ArcPad Resources Gallery - CLICK HERE - that will show you how this can be achieved.

By using the clone method you are ensuring that the new feature will have exactly the same geometry as the source layer.

This sample only shows how to go from Points to differing feature types but you can adjust it to fit your needs.