A feature layer is a visual representation of a geographic data set like roads, national parks, political boundaries, and rivers using geographic objects such as points, lines, and polygons. When a feature layer is loaded into TerraExplorer, a layer object containing all the layer's features is created in the Project Tree. This layer object enables you to perform layer level operations that set the appearance and behaviors of all the geographic objects contained within the layer.
Supported Operations
- Loading/Streaming - Load the entire content of the feature layer or stream the data so you can explore the area without waiting for the entire layer to load. All new layers must use the project's coordinate system. If a new layer is based on a source that uses a different coordinate system, you can reproject the layer, converting the layer's data to match the project's coordinate system. More about: Loading/streaming >
- General Styling - Use a layer's property sheet to set the appearance and behaviors of the geographic objects contained within the layer. More about: General styling >
- Styling by Attribute - Customize the appearance and behavior of layer features based on their field attribute values. More about: Styling by attribute >
- Spatial Queries - Find features based on their spatial relationship with a polygon, line, or point, or an existing object. More about: Spatial queries >
- Spatial Operations - Perform various spatial operations on a layer’s features, including deleting selected features, merging features into a single feature, creating a multipart feature, clipping one polygon from another, exploding a multi-part feature into its individual component features, and exporting selected features to a new file. More about: Spatial operations >
- Attribute Queries - Use the Attribute Table Tool, to search and filter the data in a feature layer to obtain and display only features with a particular value. More about: Attribute queries >
- Saving - Since you are always connected to the data source (local or remote), you can easily get the latest source updates by refreshing the layer. For .shp files and WFS-T, all changes can be saved directly to the original source file. More about: Saving >
- Uploading to SkylineGlobe Server - Upload new and modified layers to SkylineGlobe Server directly from TerraExplorer. More about: Uploading to SkylineGlobe Server >
Supported Formats:
- ESRI Shapefile: .shp
- Excel: .xls, .xlsx
- Text: free format
- File Geodatabase: *.gdb
- MapInfo: Tab, Mif, Mid
- Microstation DGN
- AutoCAD DXF: .dxf
- SQLite: *.sqlite, *.db
- GeoPackage
- Virtual Datasource (VRT)
- Geospatial PDF
- S-57
- GeoJson
Supported Servers:
- SkylineGlobe Server
- Web Feature Server (WFS)
- TerraGate SFS (legacy support)
- ESRI ArcSDE Server
- Oracle Spatial Server
- SQL Spatial Database
- PostgreSQL with PostGIS
- ESRI REST (GeoJSON) Server
More about: Working with feature layers >