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How To Align Layers ArcGIS
How To Align Layers ArcGIS
projected on the fly and will be displayed in its native coordinate system. Even if
you removed the first layer from the table of content, the coordinate system of
data frame is still set as undefined. You can define the coordinate system for data
frame in two ways:
a. You can use the Data Frame Properties dialog box to set or change the
coordinate system. If you change the data frame's coordinate system, all
layers that have coordinate systems will be projected on the fly to the new
coordinate system.
b. Start a new, empty data frame and add a layer with a defined coordinate
system. ArcMap will automatically set the data frame's coordinate system
to be the same as that of the layer. The layers added subsequently will be
automatically projected to the data frames coordinate system as long as
they have defined coordinate systems.
4. Check the layer coordinate systems. ArcMap will not project data on the fly if the
coordinate system for the layer has not been defined. Therefore, you should check
if all the layers have the defined coordinate systems. The methods to detect the
unknown coordinate system include
a. If the coordinate system is unknown, you will receive a warning message
when trying to add the layer to ArcMap as shown in Figure 1.
Fig. 1
b. In the table of content, right click the layer name, click properties, and
click the Source tab in the Layer Properties dialog box. If the layer doesn't
have a coordinate system defined, the coordinate system will be listed as
Unknown on the dialog box as shown in Figure 2. In this case, you need to
identify and define the coordinate systems for the layer.
Fig. 2
5. If all layers have defined coordinate systems as shown in Figure 3 but the layers
do not line up, one or more layers must have used wrong coordinate systems. You
need to find the correct coordinate system (step 6) and modify the definition.
Fig. 3
6. Identify unknown coordinate system for layers. Usually you can obtain the
coordinate system information from the data source (metadata or GIS staff). In
case you are not able to obtain the coordinate system information from the data
source, ArcGIS 9.3 online help document Identifying an unknown coordinate
system described the techniques to find the correct coordinate system. But the
investigation process might be tedious.