Analyzing surfaces

In this recipe, you will represent 3D surface data in a two-dimensional environment. To represent 3D surface data in the ArcMap 2D environment, you will use hillshades and contours. You can use the hillshade raster as a background for other raster or vector data in ArcMap.

Using the surface analysis tools, you can derive new surface data, such as slope and aspect or locations visibility.

Getting ready

In the surface analysis context:

• The term slope refers to the steepness of raster cells

• Aspect defines the orientation or compass direction of a cell

• Visibility identifies which raster cells are visible from a surface location

In this recipe, you will prepare your data for analysis by creating an elevation surface named Elevation from vector data. The two feature classes involved are the PointElevation point feature class and the ContourLine polyline feature class. All other output raster datasets will derive from the Elevation raster.

How to do it...

Follow these steps to prepare...