ArcMap – Convert Points to Polygons of Specific Size Using Point as Center

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I have a large collection of aerial photos with no georeferencing other than the Lat/Long location of the camera. Georeferencing them invididually is not an option (too much time, too many photos, some are oblique, some vertical). I need to automatically generate some kind of approximate polygonal footprint of each photo. I was thinking there must be some way to auto-generate a rectangle from a point layer using the point as the center and using numbers in the attribute fields as the dimensions. Or, barring that, just generating a circle at each point using an attribute as the diameter.

I'm using Arcview 9.3.1.

Best Answer

  1. Import your photo points to a shapefile (Make XY Event Layer).
  2. Buffer the points to the appropriate size of your photos.
  3. Install the bounding containers toolbox and run the extent tool. This will create a north orientated square around the buffer.

Alternatively look at building a raster catalog. This may not be suitable if you have a lot of overlap, but will let you display the images without individual georeferencing.

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