It is often useful to see your data with a regular grid. For example you could count the number of your facilities per square mile or see how the average home value varies over a square kilometer grid. The following steps outline how to create a grid and count features in each cell:
- Open or create a map with at least one point layer and, if necessary, create a selection set for the point layer you will use.
- Choose Tools>Editing>New Grid Layer.
- In the New Grid Layer dialog box, choose the Area for the grid type, choose the Cover the map window with cells of fixed size method, and type 1 in both the X and Y Grid Spacing edit boxes.
- Click OK. Maptitude creates an area grid using your map units (miles, kilometers, etc.) and adds it to the map.
- Make your new grid layer the working layer.
- Choose Tools>Analysis>Overlay to display the Overlay dialog box.
- Choose the point layer from the Layer drop-down list and, if necessary, a selection set from the Include drop-down list.
- Check the Count the Number of Features box and click OK.
Maptitude creates a table with the overlay data, joins it to the grid layer, and displays the joined view in a dataview. The [N layer_name] field contains the count of point features in each grid cell. You can add a color theme using the count field in the grid layer to see the overlay results on the map. You may need to change the drawing order or apply transparency to the theme styles ensure that no layers are obscured.