Rotating Structural Symbols

If you use the ArcPad Map Wizard to export a map and associated symbology from ArcGIS, you may encounter a bug. If the symbology for any of your shapefiles is set to utilize multiple symbols (e.g., one symbol for inclined strikes and dips, another for horizontal, and a third for vertical), and you have set the Advanced… Rotation option to rotate the symbols to their correct orientations relative to strike, you will find that the symbols will rotate in ArcGIS, but not in ArcPad. This is due to the fact that the ArcPad Map Wizard fails to export to fields necessary to produce this rotation. These fields are ‘ROTATIONTYPE’, which for geologic work is ‘GEOGRAPHIC’, and ‘ROTATIONFIELD’, which holds the information as to which field in the shapefile holds the orientation information, in our case ‘STRIKE’. These fields should be found in the ArcPad Layer File (.apl) file associated with the structural information. In our case, these are planar.apl for the planar structural data, and linear.apl for the linear structural data.

A correction can be made by hand to the appropriate .apl files using ArcPad Studio, if necessary. Open the .apl file in ArcPad Studio and view the file layout, which will look similar to HTML. On the right-hand side should be a field that looks like this:

<VALUEMAPRENDERER>.

Click the + to the left of <VALUEMAPRENDERER> to expand the field and show the options. One option should be visible:

¨lookupfield = XXXX

where XXXX is the field that contains information about the type of symbol to display.

Left click on <VALUEMAPRENDERER> to highlight it. Now right click on it to display a menu of options. Select Add Attribute.

A dialog box will open with two fields, Name and Value. Enter ‘rotationtype’ under Name and ‘geographic’ under Value (without quotes). Click OK. Now add a second attribute. This time type ‘rotationfield’ for the Name and ‘strike’ for Value (assuming that the field strike contains the information to properly rotate the symbol).

Now when you expand <VALUEMAPRENDERER> it should look like this:

+ <VALUEMAPRENDERER>

¨lookupfield = XXXX

¨rotationtype = geographic

¨rotationfield = strike

Save the .apl file, keeping the same name as the original shapefile associated with it, and transfer it to the iPAQ. All of the symbols should now rotate.