Generate polygons for rings

[lfunkhouser]

From @sindizzy on August 15, 2018 0:49

As always thank you so much for a great product!
When we generate ellipses, circles, range rings I would vote for them to be created as a polygon rather than a polyline. Quite often I need to add a fill to the ellipse and as a polyline you can't do that. I believe the reason for this was so all geometry could be saved to one feature class. I think, as a user I would not mind one feature class for polylines and one feature class for polygons. Another reason I think polygons are a good idea is that post-processing like unionization of multiple polygons is possible.

Copied from original issue: Esri/military-tools-desktop-addins#65

[topowright-zz]

Giving the user the ability to choose the geometry output for circles, ellipses, and polygons could be the path forward for this issue. For ease of use each ring would be a single feature. No unionization of features would happen automatically.

[sindizzy]

That's great.

[dfoll]

This is something that will make #438 doable as well

[dfoll]

@sindizzy @topowright we are looking at making this change. Is there any use case that you can provide in which the user would want the option to choose polyline or polygon for rings? We have established that polygons would be better, and I agree. What I'm unsure about is why we need to offer the option to do polyline.

[dfoll]

If we proceed with this work the team will need to produce a new layer package for @CTLocalGovTeam to accommodate this work. Layer package will now include two fc for rings... one for the ring itself (polygon) and one for the radials (polyline).

[sindizzy]

Yes my use case is aviation. We generate what's called Area of Operations circles and other similar features. They essentially show a geoelllipse from a center (an airport or a waypoint) at a specified distance (typically a radius in NM). We then use a fill color to denote where operations are allowed. The fill makes them stand out as opposed to just a perimeter.

[dfoll]

@saip is awaiting response about what final implementation would look like for this fix. I think we may need to do better design on this one before we hand it over

[dfoll]

@sindizzy your use case is pretty clear. One question for you. In your case is there a requirement to continue to draw rings as polylines? The change we are considering in this case is to switch rings entirely from polyline to polygon instead of offering an option to draw rings as polylines or polygons

[sindizzy]

For my case I generate range rings only as polygons. This is something that the Military Analyst did before it was sunsetted. In the past we did generate the rings as polylines ONLY because you couldn't label the polygon on the perimeter. The workaround was to generate them as polylines. With Maplex now being part of ArcMap and possibly Pro there is no need for me to create the rings as polylines.

[dfoll]

@sindizzy thanks for the response. Good feedback to know you need to be able to label on the perimeter of the polygons. Will keep this in mind as we proceed with design for this

[sindizzy]

Can we get this in the ArcMap extension as well?