Specifying a Geodatabase

When you specify a geodatabase, you also need to provide the table within the geodatabase where the item shapes can be found for the items in that hierarchy. A geodatabase will contain one or more feature tables. Each geodatabase table may represent the shapes for a single item (e.g. polygons representing all the stones of an excavated wall or a cobbled floor), or it may (more compactly) represent shapes for many different items. If shapes of many different items are contained within the geodatabase Table, then a Field must also be provided. OCHRE will query the contents of the specified Field to find the shapes for a given OCHRE item on demand. If no Field is specified, OCHRE will look for a field called "Name" by default. Any item Name, Abbreviation or Alias can be provided in the specified Field of the corresponding tables' attribute table and OCHRE will be able to match on it. Use the buttons provided on the Select table and Select field panels to look up the features tables, and the corresponding fields of their attribute tables, within the geodatabase. Select one of the table-field combinations to be used as the matching-field within which OCHRE will look for matches on the Name, Abbreviation or Aliases of OCHRE items. If no table is specified, OCHRE will look for feature tables that match the names (or abbreviations or aliases) of items within the hierarchy or set.

Specifying Shapefiles

This works much the same way as geodatabases above. You can link one or more shapefiles into the Map Options of a hierarchy or set. OCHRE will expect to find therein the shapes for the items contained within the hierarchy or set. Here we have a shapefile of polygons (drawn areas of structures and sites), and another of point coordinates, both representing survey sites within the same hierarchy. Some items shapes will be found as polygons, while others will be found as points. Use the button on the Select field panel to look up the fields in the attribute table, and select one of the fields to be used as the matching-field within which OCHRE will look for matches on the Name, Abbreviation or Aliases of OCHRE items.

Here we see that some of the survey sites are represented as polygon shapes while others are simply point coordinates. OCHRE queries the listed shapefiles in order, trying to match the Name, Abbreviation, or any of the Aliases of an item against the values of the specify Field. OCHRE stops looking when it finds a match and displays the found shapes on the map view on demand.