> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.os.uk/os-downloads/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.os.uk/os-downloads/products/land-and-terrain-portfolio/os-open-greenspace/os-open-greenspace-getting-started-guide/esri-arcgis.md). # ESRI ArcGIS #### LOADING AND DISPLAYING SHAPEFILE SUPPLY There are two possible ways of loading and displaying the shapefile data in ESRI ArcGIS. The shapefile data can be loaded straight into ArcGIS. However, if more than one 100 x 100 km tile is being loaded, the rendering performance can become an issue. The recommended way of loading the data is to use a file geodatabase to house the data. This is the method which will be described in this guide. 1. Open ArcCatalog. Choose a folder where the file geodatabase is to be created.

ArcCatalog File Geodatabase option under the New tab in the file context menu

2. Right click on the folder and in the context menu select ‘new’ and then ‘File Geodatabase’. Give the new file geodatabase a suitable name for ease of reference by highlighting the geodatabase and typing a new name.

Database files and folders shown under the OS_Open_Greenspace folder

3. Once created, right click on the file geodatabase, and select ‘import’ and then ‘feature class (multiple)’.

Feature class import option under the Geodatabase context menu

4. In the next window, browse to the location where the data sits which is to be imported. Because the individual shape files begin with the 100 km prefix letters, it is possible to import more than one OS Open Greenspace tile into the geodatabase as per user requirements.

Feature Class to Geodatabase dialog window without any data entered — Feature class to Geodatabase dialog

5. Click on the button to the right of the blank window under ‘input features’ and navigate to the folder(s) where the OS Open Greenspace shapefile data resides.

Input features dialog showing the file explorer window with TF_AccessPoint.shp and TF_GreenspaceSite.shp files available — Input features dialog

6. Select all the shapefiles that are required in the window and click ‘add’.

A screenshot of the feature class to Geodatabase dialog showing multiple input features. — Feature class to Geodatabase dialog showing multiple input features

The shapefiles selected will now appear as a list in the import feature class window. The output file geodatabase should default to the one which has been previously selected. Click ‘OK’. The window will close and now ArcCatalog will import the features classes into the file geodatabase. A dialog box will appear when the process is complete. If the file geodatabase is now highlighted, a list of the imported features classes should be visible. In this example, two shapefiles covering the 100 km areas TR and TG have been imported. This has created four new feature classes in the file geodatabase - two for access points and two for greenspace sites.

A useful point to note is that loading the shapefiles into a file geodatabase will automatically add spatial indexes to the data in the import process. There is therefore no need to manually add one once the data has been loaded, which would be the case if shapefiles had been loaded into ArcGIS without using the file geodatabase option. As has been previously mentioned, the addition of a spatial index greatly improves rendering performance. 7. Start ArcMap. Click on the ‘import data’ button in the top toolbar.

In the window that appears, navigate to the location of the file geodatabase just created. Select the feature classes that are required and click ‘add’.

Add data dialog with feature classes available in the file explorer — Add data dialog

The data will load into ArcMap. Although ArcMap does put the shapefiles into a more logical sequence, the user can move the layers according to the desired preferences. The data will, of course, load in as un-styled data. ArcMap will assign a random style to the data.

Unstyled data shown in the main data window

The user can manually style each of the layer files by right-clicking on each of the loaded layers, selecting ‘properties’ and then ‘symbology’. ArcMap contains an extensive range of tools to allow the user to apply various styles to each layer of the data and then save the work as an ArcGIS layer file. This procedure is not covered in this guide. A set of ESRI layer files for OS Open Greenspace will be available for download from the GitHub website at product launch. Follow the instructions in the Quick Start Guide which accompanies these files to apply the styling to the data. These style files will work with either a direct shapefile load in ArcMap or using the file geodatabase methodology described here.

GreenspaceSite data shown styled in the main data window — Data shown styled in the main data window

The user should see something like the screenshot above when the process is complete. 8. If using a different set of layer files, the procedure for adding a style in ArcMap is as follows – this method can be used for many other data types. To add a style to a layer, simply right-click on a layer, select properties and then ‘symbology’.

Layer properties dialog showing layer styling options

9. In the layer properties window, select ‘import’ (the button below the tabs at the top). A list of available styles, drawn from the imported layer file will appear. Simply select the required style and click ‘OK’. The symbol in the box will now change to the predefined style.

A screenshot of the Layer Properties window with the Symbiology tab selected.

Click ‘OK’ again and the style will then be applied in ArcMap. Repeat this procedure for all the layers until the OS Open Greenspace data is styled to requirements. Labels for certain features can also be applied as needed. ## Loading multiple shapefiles for larger areas of interest If the user wants to load a larger area of interest, it is recommended that they merge the shapefiles together before loading them into the file geodatabase. This procedure is described later in this guide. Doing this will also mean that the supplied layer files for styling will only need to be applied once to the data and all the styles will work properly. If, however, the user simply wants to load multiple areas using the file geodatabase option, there is no mandatory requirement to merge shapefiles together. ## Merging shapefiles and removing duplicate features from the data As has already been stated, OS Open Greenspace is supplied as ‘hairy tiles’ with features which cross a tile edge being supplied in both tiles in which the feature appears. These duplicate features will occur if more than one 100 x 100 km tile is loaded into a file geodatabase. In many instances, the user will not need to remove duplicate features along the tile edges as the features will display perfectly clearly with one duplicate feature overlying the other. There may, however, be instances where the user wishes to carry out some form of analysis using feature counts contained within the data. In this case, the data will need to have the duplicate features removed. To remove duplicate features in ArcMap, the user needs to merge the tiles together before removing the duplicate features. This procedure can take some time, so the user should consider if this is really needed. 1. The tiles need to be merged together to create new features classes within the file geodatabase containing the original data (or to a completely new file geodatabase or shapefile if required).

Merge menu option in the Geoprocessing menu

2. Using either ArcMap or ArcCatalog, from the main menu, select ‘Geoprocessing’ followed by ‘merge’. In the next window, select the layers to be merged. In this example two feature classes, the Greenspace Sites layers for TF and TG, are being merged together. All the attribution is being copied into the new features class though the user can specify what attributes need to be copied. The user can also specify the output required. This can be a new feature class within a file geodatabase or a shapefile. In this example, a new feature class containing the merged data will be created.

Merge dialog showing two input data sets

3. Click ‘OK’ when all the feature classes (or shapefiles) to be merged have been selected. Using this method, a number of OS Open Greenspace tiles can be merged together, although only two are shown in this example. ArcGIS will then merge the files and load the newly created feature class (or a shapefile if that was being used), into the map window. Depending on the sizes and number of tiles being merged, this could take some time. A dialog box will appear when the process is finished. In the example shown below, a new feature class within the original file geodatabase used to hold the data has been created. This new feature class is called ‘Open\_Greenspace\_Sites\_Merged’ and covers the entire area of the two separate feature classes previously loaded into the geodatabase. This new feature class has been styled using the ESRI style file for OS Open Greenspace data which will be available from GitHub. It’s important to follow the instructions in the Quick Start guide, provided with these files, to get the right result.

OS Open Greenspace data modelled in the main data window of ESRI ArcGIS. Many points are shown with a cluster to the lower centre right of the open data window. Several polygons are shown in the data window. — OS Open Greenspace data modelled in the main data window of ESRI ArcGIS

The ‘Dissolve’ function in ArcGIS will remove the duplicated features along the tile boundaries. This procedure can be carried out in either ArcCatalog or ArcMap. Firstly select ‘Geoprocessing’ and then ‘Dissolve’ from the main menu.

Dissolve menu option in the Geoprocessing menu

The user will then need to specify which merged file from which duplicate features are to be removed. In this example, we are looking at the Open\_Greenspace\_Sites\_Merged feature class. We are going to save the de-duplicated data as a feature class within the original file geodatabase called ‘OpenGreenspace\_Sites\_Dissolved’. All the dissolve fields in the box need to be ticked except the ObjectID field as otherwise the attribution will not be carried over to the new dissolved file. Once complete, the new dissolved feature class will be loaded into ArcMap. This new dissolved feature class will contain no duplicate features. This procedure could also be performed using shapefiles simply loaded into ArcMap without using a file geodatabase.

Dissolve dialog window showing multiple feature classes loaded except OBJECTID — Dissolve dialog window showing multiple feature classes loaded

Resulting data loaded in the main data window

The new feature class can now be styled as previously described. A count using the attribute table on both the original merged file and the dissolved file will confirm that the dissolved shapefile contains fewer features. The count below shows the merged feature class with duplicates containing 4,473 features.

Merged feature class with associated feature count

The count below shows that the dissolved feature class contains 4,468 features.

A screenshot of the dissolved feature class with associated feature count. — Dissolved feature class with associated feature count

## Loading and displaying the GML file supply The GML data can be imported into ArcGIS using the Quick Import function in Arc Toolbox. The data will be imported un-styled. Users should also note that due to the large file sizes of some of the 100 x 100km grid tiles especially within larger cities, this import may take time to process.

ArcToolbox menu showing the Quick Import tool

The user will need to specify the type of data being imported (in this case, GML data) and browse to the files where the .GML data is stored.

The quick import will create a new file geodatabase into which to import the data. Once the database location and name has been selected click ‘OK’ in the dialog box as shown below to start the quick import. It is important to note that all the .GML files which are required for import should be in the same folder as each other and not in separate folders as they are downloaded, e.g. one file in a folder called ‘TG’ and one in a different folder called ‘TF’. If this is the case, the quick import process would have to be repeated for each folder. Placing all the .GML files in one folder will allow multiple imports at once as shown in the example below.

Quick import dialog box showing input dataset folder and output staging Geodatabase file

Once the quick import function has been completed, the data can be added using the usual ‘add data’ button in ArcMap and selecting all the layers from the newly created file geodatabase. The data will be loaded un-styled as shown in the example below.

Add data dialog showing access point, GreenspaceSite, and Feature Collection in the file explorer window — Add data dialog

The resulting imported data will then appear in the ArcMap window and can then be styled to suit requirements. In the case of other .GML datasets, the user may have to manually select the column header of the appropriate table within the data on which to base the styling. This is because in the GML imported data, the column header information is not shortened, as with the shapefile data. Shapefile data is limited to eight characters within the column header. GML imported data is not limited in this fashion. In the case of OS Open Greenspace data, this manual selection of column header is not required.

GML Imported data shown in the main data window

In the example below, we are matching the column ‘function’ in the ESRI .lyr file with the function column header in the imported GML data.

In this example, the supplied ESRI .lyr file has successfully styled the information from the imported .GML data according to information in the function column within the data. When ‘OK’ is clicked, the data appears as shown below:

Styled data shown in the main data window

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