To Add Contour Lines

You can can add contour lines to a raster-based surface in your map to create a contour or topographic map. You add contour lines to surface layers in Display Manager.

To create contour lines

  1. In Display Manager , right-click a surface layer, and select Create Contour Layer.
  2. In the Generate Contour dialog box, enter a name for the new Display Manager layer that will contain the contour lines.
  3. In the Contour Elevation Interval list, select the difference in elevation between contour lines, for example, 10, 20, or 50.
  4. Select the units (meters or feet) used to measure the elevation in your surface.
  5. In the Major Contour Every list, select the interval between major (bold) contour lines.

    For example, if you choose 5, every fifth contour line will be bolded.

  6. To label the major contour lines with the elevations they represent, select the Label The Elevation check box.
  7. For Create Contour As, select the type of feature to use when creating contour lines (polyline or polygon).
  8. For Save Contours Into Filename, enter a name for the new SDF file that will store your contour line features.
  9. Click OK.

The new contour line features are added to your map. They are placed on a new Display Manager layer with the layer name you specified, and stored in an SDF file.

To edit the line styles and labels used for the contour lines

  1. In Display Manager, click the contour layer and click Style in the toolstrip.
  2. In the Style Editor, modify the line styles and labels, as you would for other features.

To delete a layer of contour lines

  1. In Display Manager, select the contour layer.
  2. Click Remove.