TeeJet Fieldware Tool - Manual (Page 34)

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FIELD TRANSFER TEMPLATES
As was mentioned earlier, a template contains the information required to transfer an Fieldware file object to
an object in a Shapefile, or create an Fieldware file object from an object in a Shapefile. To better understand
templates, we must first understand the data which makes up an Fieldware file or Shapefile object. An object
(Polygon, Polyline, Point) is just a shape (one or more positions) with an associated set of attributes or fields. The
shape’s fields specify information about the shape such as its name or ID. The shapes stored in a Fieldware file
and Shapefile objects are essentially the same. However, the fields associated with the shapes are different. In
order to transfer the contents of an Fieldware file object to or from a Shapefile object we must specify how the
Fieldware file object’s fields are mapped or transferred to the Shapefile object’s fields. It is the template which
stores these field transfers. Fieldware files can contain one or more object types where .shp
files can only be a point, a polyline, or a polygon. To convert a .gmf file to .shp where the .gmf file
contains points and polygons, you would run the conversion twice, once to make the point shapefile and again to
make the polygon shape file.
Figure 38: Converting To A Shape File
If you experiment with the Convert dialog, you will notice that different templates are displayed for different
combinations of the source file, destination file, and object type. This is because the fields for each Fieldware
object type of Shapefile are unique. The Convert dialog only displays templates which make sense for the
selected files and object type. Under some circumstances, no templates are displayed because none of the
existing templates contain appropriate field transfers. You may have discovered that the a template named < None
> is often included in the Template list (see (Figure 38)). This template is exactly what its name implies, a template