PolySet | R Documentation |
A PolySet object comprises a data frame that defines a collection of polygonal contours (i.e., line segments joined at vertices). These contours can be open-ended (polylines) or closed (polygons).
PBSmapping functions that expect PolySet's will accept properly formatted data frames in their place (see 'Details').
as.PolySet
attempts to coerce a data frame to an object with
class PolySet.
is.PolySet
returns TRUE
if its argument is of class
PolySet.
as.PolySet(x, projection = NULL, zone = NULL)
is.PolySet(x, fullValidation = TRUE)
x |
data frame to be coerced or tested. |
projection |
optional |
zone |
optional |
fullValidation |
Boolean value; if |
In our software, a PolySet data frame defines a collection of polygonal contours (i.e., line segments joined at vertices), based on four or five numerical fields:
PID
- the primary identification number for a contour;
SID
- optional, the secondary identification number for a
contour;
POS
- the position number associated with a vertex;
X
- the horizontal coordinate at a vertex;
Y
- the vertical coordinate at a vertex.
The simplest PolySet lacks an SID
column, and each PID
corresponds to a different contour. By analogy with a child's
“follow the dots” game, the POS
field enumerates the
vertices to be connected by straight lines. Coordinates (X
,
Y
) specify the location of each vertex. Thus, in familiar
mathematical notation, a contour consists of n
points
(x_{i}, y_{i}
) with i = 1, ..., n
, where i
corresponds to the
POS
index. A PolySet has two potential interpretations. The first
associates a line segment with each successive pair of points from 1 to
n
, giving a polyline (in GIS terminology) composed of the
sequential segments. The second includes a final line segment joining
points n
and 1, thus giving a polygon.
The secondary ID field allows us to define regions as composites of
polygons. From this point of view, each primary ID identifies a
collection of polygons distinguished by secondary IDs. For example, a
single management area (PID
) might consist of two fishing areas,
each defined by a unique SID
. A secondary polygon can also
correspond to an inner boundary, like the hole in a doughnut. We adopt
the convention that POS
goes from 1 to n
along an outer
boundary, but from n
to 1 along an inner boundary, regardless of
rotational direction. This contrasts with other GIS software, such as
ArcView (ESRI 1996), in which outer and inner boundaries correspond to
clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, respectively.
The SID field in a PolySet with secondary IDs must have integer values
that appear in ascending order for a given PID
. Furthermore,
inner boundaries must follow the outer boundary that encloses them. The
POS
field for each contour (PID
, SID
) must
similarly appear as integers in strictly increasing or decreasing order,
for outer and inner boundaries respectively. If the POS
field
erroneously contains floating-point numbers, fixPOS
can
renumber them as sequential integers, thus simplifying the insertion of
a new point, such as point 3.5 between points 3 and 4.
A PolySet can have a projection
attribute, which may be missing,
that specifies a map projection. In the current version of PBS Mapping,
projection can have character values "LL"
or "UTM"
,
referring to “Longitude-Latitude” and “Universal
Transverse Mercator”. We explain these projections more completely
below. If projection is numeric, it specifies the aspect ratio r
,
the number of x
units per y
unit. Thus, r
units of
x
on the graph occupy the same distance as one unit of
y
. Another optional attribute zone
specifies the UTM zone
(if projection="UTM"
) or the preferred zone for conversion from
Longitude-Latitude (if projection="LL"
).
A data frame's class attribute by default contains the string
"data.frame"
. Inserting the string "PolySet"
as the class
vector's first element alters the behaviour of some functions. For
example, the summary
function will print details specific
to a PolySet. Also, when PBSprint
is TRUE
, the
print function will display a PolySet's summary rather than the contents
of the data frame.
The as.PolySet
method returns an object with classes
"PolySet"
and "data.frame"
, in that order.
Nicholas M. Boers, Staff Software Engineer
Jobber, Edmonton AB
Last modified Rd: 2022-09-06
Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). (1996) ArcView GIS: The Geographic Information System for Everyone. ESRI Press, Redlands, California. 340 pp.
PolyData, EventData, LocationSet
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