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How can I add borders to an area?

Each "area" in ProMaps can have a border shown on the map. "Areas" are the categories listed on the left side of ProMaps, when it's in Horizontal orientation, and from the drop down list at the top of the screen in vertical orientation.

Each area can have an optional border, border color, and border width. This article describes how to add the coordinates required to draw the borders on the map. For more on "areas" in general, and how to create or change them, read Working With Areas.

Adding border coordinates

If you visit the Setup layout in ProMaps and click on "Areas", you'll see that each area can have a border described by a set of lat/long coordinates like this:

Note that your last point should be the same as your first point if you want the polygon to be closed.

You'll want to use GoogleMaps' online tools to construct the coordinates for each area you'd like to use in ProMaps. Follow the instructions below and you'll end up with a series of coordinates you can paste into the areas' Border Coordinates in ProMaps.

1. Navigate to http://www.birdtheme.org/useful/v3tool.html and move the map center to the area you're interested in.

2. Begin clicking points to draw the border of your area. You can use "delete last point" and "edit lines" if you make a mistake. When you're done, click "show kml". You'll find the coordinates you're interested in between the <coordinates></coordinates> tags of the kml file.

3. Please note that the kml format flips the order of latitude and longitude so you will need to reverse the numbers before pasting them into ProMaps areas. ProMaps uses the format of "latitude,longitude" with a comma separator, no space. This is kind of tedious, but you only need to do it once per area.

Note that if you end up with a very long list of values you need to transpose (need to switch the order of), you can use the script "Transpose Lat / Long" in ProMaps' "Developer" scripts folder. Read the script comments for instructions.

Making Lots of Areas

If you need to make lots of area borders, you may not want to have to leave FileMaker every time to do it. We can customize ProMaps so that you can alter borders right inside the app. Here's an overview; contact us for details.

https://vimeo.com/346630050

Going further

For the truly geeky, there is a way to get these coordinates using the Twitter API. This *could* be used to grab coordinates for specific city names though the lat / long would still need to be transposed.

We've also made customizations to automatically calculate the area (or neighborhood) for a given address. This mod works in FileMaker client and in WebDirect. Contact ius for details.