Creating merged boundaries around grouped by shapes

Creating Custom Boundaries around groups of areas/shapes

If you have a list of areas and they can be classified based on an identifier or class of some kind, you can thematically classify them to colour the individual area components that belong in each class. However, the boundaries are still for each component and doesn’t get grouped. To create merged boundaries around multiple areas based on a classification you can use the following steps:

• Open a browse on the schema that includes your shapes and the column you want to group them by.

• Open the Expression Builder

• Tick Grouped

• Add the ID/ Class column to the group by expression section and remove the other red columns.

Then add the Boundary column from the master table of the component schema.

• Right-click on the Boundary and click Replace With… | Max.

• Click ok and it will create the group by table with the merged boundaries as a column.

We next want to create a new view table to access these grouped by boundaries from.

• Navigate to the Browse tab and select Save To | View Table:

• The File export wizard window will appear, and you can export the browse.

• Select New in the Schema section in the bottom left to save it into a new schema. You can give the schema a name and description and then give the table a name and description and click Export.

• You will then find the new table in a new schema within your User Defined Data schema group on the left-hand Data panel.

• Drag on the boundary column onto a Map as a layer and you will see the newly merged boundaries around each group of areas.

If you the layer causes an error, this may be due to the Key of the View table not matching the Column in the view table. Right click on the table you created, click Properties and change Key to match the ID column name.

Before:

After: