GRID ANALYST EXTENSION (Ver. 1.

1)
Developed by:
Dr. Arun K. Saraf
Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Roorkee,
ROORKEE - 247 667, INDIA
Email : [email protected]
Updated on: 18 May, 2000.
Grid Analyst Extension will provide the Arc View 3.1 & Spatial Analyst 1.1
users with the ability to perform number of task on grids.
Grid Analyst Extension has been developed with Arc View 3.1 & Spatial
Analyst 1.1 on a Pentium-300Mhz machine. If you come across any
problems / suggestions please report to me to improve further.

Dependencies:
In order to run Grid Analyst Extension you require the following extensions
present in $AVHOME\Ext32 directory:
1.
2.
3.

Spatial Analyst 1.1 (file: Spatial.avx)

Generalize Grid Tools (file: Spgenrlze.avx)
Transform Grid Tools (file: Sptrnsfrm.avx)

P.S. Generalize and Transform Grid Tools are available at ESRI Web site.
Once Grid Analyst Extension loaded into Arc View, it will add three menu
items into GUI, which are as follows:
1. Grid Analyst at the end of GUI
2. Generalize Grid just after Surface menu
3. Transform Grid just after Generalize Grid menu.

Using Grid Analyst Extension:

Grid Analyst Extension does the following tasks:
1. Convert image to grid theme
This menu item will convert an image theme to grid theme. The use of this is
great! Many times you would like to mask your image using a watershed
boundary. For this purpose, the first step would be to convert a satellite False
Colour Composite (FCC) image to three grid themes for each band. Later

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these grids can be utilized to extract grid theme using polygon theme (menu
item No. 3 of this extension).
This menu item uses a script, which is available with Spatial Analyst
Extension (as Spatial.ConvertToGrid).
2. Convert grid theme to an image
This menu item will convert a grid theme to an image theme i.e. a backward
conversion as done at first step. This will take a grid or set of grids that were
created from an false color image and convert the grids back into an BSQ
image with an associated Arc Info header .hdr file. You should have no
problems converting a set of 3 grids that were originally a .jpg, .bmp, or .tif
image file. The usefulness of this conversion is when at menu item No.3 (of
this extension) a grid has been extracted using polygon which may be a
watershed boundary, then this backward conversion would be required to
create back your original bands which were used to make a FCC. One
important point to note here that in order to create FCC from extracted bands
(converted from extracted grid to image) user need to utilize some general
purpose graphical softwares e.g. Corel Photo Paint, Photo Styler etc. The
limitations of this routine to note is that all of the grids must be from the same
source image and they must be of the integer type and the cell values must
no be greater then 255. This works perfectly well with 8-bit integer grids,
however once your grid is having real numbers this will produce nonunderstandable image.
This menu item uses a script originally written by Kenneth R. McVay
(Conversion.Grid2Img).
3. Extract grid theme using polygon theme
This menu item (as stated above) that it will extract a grid theme using a
polygon theme, which may be a watershed boundary etc. The good part of
this item is that your extracted grid will retain correct coordinates without
bringing any error to them.
This menu item uses a script, which is available with Spatial Analyst
Extension (as Grid.ClipToPoly).
4. Extract grid theme using selected graphic
This menu item does almost the same task as performed by menu item No.3,
however the difference here is that instead using a polygon theme an user
can use a selected graphic which should be a polygon.
This menu item uses a script, which is available with Spatial Analyst
Extension (as Spatial.ExtractByGraphic).

5. Extract X, Y and Z values for point theme from grid theme

Under this menu item user can extract the x, y and z values from a surface /
grid for each point in a point theme. If point features are selected, then only
those selected points will receive x, y and z attributes. The use of this routine
is multipurpose. Many times a user may require to extract /read x, y and z
values in a tabular form from a DEM grid. Such extracted information can
further be used in various analyses.
The item will add (if not already present) and then populates x and y
coordinate fields (Xval and Yval respectively) in addition to a Zval field, which
stores the surface / grid values. These fields and attributes are written to the
point theme feature table. This assumes that a view is the active document
and that the point theme to which the x, y, and z values will be written is the
active theme. If the point theme is being edited, you will receive an error
message indicating that you should finish editing. This is done to allow you to
save your edits as desired prior to further editing. If the point theme is not
being edited then the script will prompt you to select the surface theme and
then display the results in a table.
The script will work with both projected and decimal degree point data. If the
view is projected, the coordinates written to the xval and yval fields will be
in the projected units of the view.
This menu item uses a script (developed by ESRI), which is available as
Extract Zvalues for point theme on ESRI Web site.
6. Convert grid theme to x, y and z text file
This menu item will convert a grid to a text file containing the x, y and z values
in a tabular format. User can choose space, comma or tab delimited
approach. If in any case the converted text file has to be used later in Arc
View then it would be better to use comma as delimiter and change file
extension to .txt. Further, use some editor like Word Pad to edit this file and
add a row as first row for the name of the columns e.g. x,y,z. This will facilitate
to bring back the converted file again into Arc View for some other analysis
purposes.
This menu item uses a script, which has been developed by Stephen Lead
(available as Grid to xyz text file on ESRI Web site).
7. Draw cross section along a polyline
This menu item creates chart profiles of line features (streams, roads, trails,
etc.) using a line theme and an elevation grid theme. This requires two active
themes, the first a line theme and the second a grid theme of elevations. This
requires lines to be selected. In general, selected lines should be connected
for results to be realistic. There is no programmatic check to ensure selected
lines are connected. In general, selected lines should not contain multiple

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branching for results to be realistic. That is, each node should connect no
more than two _selected_ line segments.
Merges selected lines then finds interval points along the merged line at equal
intervals. User is queried for how many divisions of merged line. Queries
active grid theme cells for elevation values at interval points.
This outputs a .dbf file of distances starting at the lowest interval point and
includes all interval points and corresponding z values. Outputs a line graph
(profile) of distance from origin vs. z values if no more than about 100 interval
points are produced. Use a more robust graphing package to graph larger
outputs.
This menu item uses a script, which has been developed by Bill Eichenlaub
(available as Profiler on ESRI Web site).
8. Subtract Grid Minimum Value from grid theme
This menu item uses a technique for adjusting the brightness of an image
band that has been affected by atmospheric scattering of light. Any image
being recorded from a platform i.e. plane, satellite, or balloon is affected by
the atmosphere. Path radiance, diffuse sky irradiance, etc.. will generally
cause the recorded image to be brighter then it normally would be without an
atmosphere in the reflective visible and IR , thus you are not getting the true
picture. There are a number of ways both simple (or rather crude) and
complex to account for this added brightness. This method is a commonly
used simple method for doing so.
P.S. This method requires a dark object in the scene i.e. water body or deep
shadows. If your scene is one of a gypsum desert with no shadows then
forget it.
To use this script make sure you have the grid theme that you want to dark
subtract active and run this script. A new script will be created with the grid
minimum subtracted from the grid.
This menu item uses a script, which has been developed by Kenneth R.
McVay (available as DarkSubtract on ESRI Web site).
9. Project grid theme from one projection to another projection
This takes a grid with known projection and allows user to re-project grid into
a new projection system.
This menu item uses a script, which has been developed by Kenneth R.
McVay (available as Grid Projector on ESRI Web site).

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10. Calculates grid correlation and coefficient matrices
This menu item will calculate a covariance and correlation matrices between
the active grid themes sending output to a file. This requires two grid themes
(spatially same) to be active in a view.
This menu item uses a script, which has been developed by Kenneth R.
McVay (available as Grid Covariance on ESRI Web site).
Further, this extension also incorporates two more extensions Grid
Generalization Tools and Grid Transformation Tools available on ESRI Web
site.
11. Calculates statistics of a grid theme
This menu item will calculate advanced statistics of the active grid themes and
display as well as save output into a .TXT file (as follows):
Theme Name : Elevgrd
Rows=430
Cols = 616
N
= 264880
Mean = 1276.66405
SD
= 548.077
Min
Max

= 94.738
= 3070.291

Sum = 338162773
Range= 2975.552

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