[GIS] How to edit several layers simultaneously

editinglayers

I have the land occupation of an area and a layer for each year : 2005-2006-2007-2008…2010.

These are polygons.

There are errors on layers which are common to all of them. For instance, there's a house and a big garden, and the whole thing is considered as one entity on every layer.

I would like to cut the polygons one time (and not edit the four layers round by round) and later give the land occupation on the polygon. It's a little bit boring to repeat this operation.

I thought about topology but there are other differences that make this approach very complicated (that the normal evolution of landscape) I've heard about relationship classes but it wasn't clear and it seemed to me that you can only work on 2 layers simultaneously.

Software doesn't matter. I can work on ArcGIS suite but I would prefer to work on Open Source Software.

Best Answer

This is how I'd do it in ArcMap for a simple desktop user, without any levels of versioning/validation

  • Create a new field on each layer, 'Year', and set to 2005, 2006, whatever for all items
  • Merge the layers. This will retain overlapping polygons
  • Work with them as one layer for splits, selected vertex editing, etc
  • Make sure that you work in a manner that can operate on multiple polygons: Select points and shapes with a dragged selection box rather than clicking on them.
  • When you're done, export each layer back to an independent one based on select by attributes -> year={2005,2006,etc}
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