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Which shape file is more appropriate for drawing a boundary of an area. I mean would I take polyline feature or polygon feature for drawing a boundary?

I want to digitize a map of metropolitan area. First I have made a manual map and now I am trying to digitize.In this map there are moujas, thanas, rivers, roads, different important location such a market place, police station. So in this case, there is overlapping of borders. Because a thana border can be a district border at the same time. So In this case which feature I chose.

Sushanta Gupta
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    Both of them are useful, but for different needs. What are you trying to do? If we have more details on what you are looking for, we can better answer this question. Please edit the question and add as much relevant details as possible. – Devdatta Tengshe Jan 13 '14 at 15:26
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    I agree with the above comment, we need to know more information. For example, are you planning to use the resulting shapefile for visual/display purposes or are you trying to perform some spatial analysis (ex: calculate how many people are in a particular area for example). If analysis, what kind of analysis are you wanting to use it in? If visual/display purposes, what are you wanting it to show? Also potentially useful and/or helpful would be to know what source information you already have available about this boundary. – John Jan 13 '14 at 15:36

2 Answers2

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For me, choosing between polyline and polygon shapefiles breaks down to the following:

  1. Do I need to calculate distance or area?

    For shapefiles, choose polygons for area and polylines for length. However, if you have a polygon featureclass in a file geodatabase, length and area are automatically calculated for you.

  2. How do I need to display my data?

    Features such as rivers and roads are best represented by polylines, while features such as countries, lakes and land cover are best represented by polygons.

You may also be interested in a similar question: How to use directional shading on boundaries for cartographic effect?

Community
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Aaron
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I would start with polygons to represent area. At a future point, if you feel that polylines suits your needs better than polygons, it is quite easy to convert the data.

What type of "area" are you trying to represent?

Scott_B
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