Purpose:
Reenforce the lecture on Cartographic Data Structures
ESRI software has both "shapefiles" and "coverages". A shape file consists a independent descriptions of each geometric feature, while a coverage has a more complex set of topological relationships between objects of different dimensions.
Take a blank sheet of paper, write your name on it.
1) Draw (free-hand) a few polygons (three at least) with some shared borders.
2) Show how a shapefile represents these polygons (a schematic diagram of the data, not an actual implementation with the measurements and headers and all the rest)
3) Reproduce (near enough) the three polygons.
4) Show how a topological data structure (coverage) represents this network. Show each dimension entity (nodes, chains [arcs], polygons) and how they are related (logically).
Version of 13 May 2003