I am new to ArcMap (ArcEditor) 10. I have been mapping ethanol plants (which utilize corn to produce ethanol) and corn production amounts in the counties of the USA.
My goal is to draw buffer zones (circles) around the ethanol plants (dots). However, the tricky part is that the circles must reflect what region an ethanol plant buys corn from in order to sustain its ethanol production. I know how much corn each plant needs and I know the average corn production/square mile in each county.
How do I get ArcMap to calculate the radiuses of the buffer zones it needs to draw corn from?
This gets especially tricky when I have an ethanol plant lying on the border of two counties and each county has a different corn production amount/square mile.
In the image attached, the dots are ethanol plants. The red regions show the county is self-sufficient in producing enough corn for its ethanol plants. The orange regions show that corn must be imported from other counties to support its ethanol plants.
Best Answer
Basically what you need to do is to add a column to your plants shapefile that corresponds to the size of that buffer.
You could also add fields for the amount of corn each plant needs and other useful information to help you calculate the size of the buffer.
You, of course, will need to fill it with something meaningful. To do that I can suggest the "Calculate Values" command, located inside the table view (right click on the column to be calculated and Calculate Values). With it you can enter complex expressions.
For creating the buffer, there is an option of the buffer geoprocessing tool to use a column as the radius of the buffer.