Columbia Mapping

ArcView Dialogs

This page is meant to be a place where the GIS professionals can find examples of ArcView Dialogs that will help her/him to be more proficient in their craft. A word of caution: Very few of them will work right out of the box. These dialogs are meant as examples, and to get them to work at your shop, you will need to modify the scripts associated with each dialog. You will need to download ESRI's Dialog Designer extension -- provided free of charge -- before you can load these dialogs.

As examples, these dialogs are a great resource. You can learn how to put label buttons on a view, and create dialogs for adding themes, querying databases, and printing maps. Where approriate, several dialogs are grouped together. I hope you find the dialogs here to be helpful in many ways. They are generally well written, with good documentation, and are meant to be good examples. The dialogs are here for your use and dissemination to others. Please read the disclaimer above. These dialogs were zipped using PKZIP.

Adding Themes
Description: The purpose of these dialogs is to make is easier for ArcView users to add themes. The first dialog presents the user with a listing of six theme categories (e.g., Tax Lots, Environmental). After the user selects a category, a second dialog is presented which lists the themes in that category and includes all custom legends. The custom legends use radio buttons so the user can only select one legend. In the case of Tax Lots, the scale dependency is displayed. The dialog permits the user to add several themes at the same time once "Done" is selected.
Before any of the six theme dialogs opens, a script checks to see if the theme is already present in the current view. If so, then the theme's check box and any custom legends are grayed out so that the theme cannot be added twice.
Modifications: Before these dialogs will work for you, you will need to change the environmental variable and paths to the themes. However, you can open each of the dialogs without changing anything, just be aware that you will get error messages. These dialogs were developed for Jackson County (Oregon) as part of a Planning Department application. Special thanks to Kerry Lay, GIS Manager, for permission to include these dialog examples.( addtheme.zip 37K )

Print a View
Description: There is one dialog associated with this routine, and the user has the opportunity to select the size of map, select themes to include in the legend (only classified legends) input two main titles and two subtitles, and revise the map scale if desired. ( printmap.zip 12K )

Query Tax Lot Database
Description: There are several dialogs associated with this application. On the first dialog, the user inputs the Owner's Name, Site Address, or Tax Lot Number. If there are multiple matches, these are displayed in a dialog box, and the user selects one.
Next, the results of the query are displayed in a dialog box, including land and improvement values.
Where appropriate, the dialogs are designed to expedite the queries so that the user can hit "Enter" after typing in a selecteion instead of clicking on the "Continue" button. In the case of a dialog box that displays multiple choises, the user can siomply double-click. ( search.zip 20K )

Add Buttons to View
Description: This routine includes three scripts and two bitmap icons. Attach the first script (aa.View.MakeButtons) to a button on the button bar and change the icon (printwh.bmp). When selected, this button creates four Label Buttons for printing and places them directly onto the current view.
The first script will then change the icon (printred.bmp) on the button, and also change the script (aa.View.DeleteButtons) called by the icon and the help status line. Addionally, when the first script creates the Label Buttons on the view, it attaches other scripts to each label button (not included).
In other words, working as a toggle, the first script is attached to a white print icon, and after the white print icon is selected, the icon changes to a red print icon. The second script deletes the four Label Buttons on the view and then changes the icon, script, and help line back to their original state.
When one of the Label Buttons is selected, the Label Button is first deleted. The third script shows how the deleting of the Label Button is accomplished.
Modifications: This routine works out of the box. However, to make it useful, you will need to change the scripts attached to each Label Button, and possibly the Label that is placed on the Label Button. ( buttons.zip 3K )

Please e-mail Keith Massie if you have comments.
Updated April 15, 1999
Copyright 1997 Columbia Mapping