JD Office Tools
 The
JDO Boundary Tool is a simple utility that modifies the shapefiles
exported by John Deere's JDOffice application. The exported
shapefile uses a column type for floating point numbers that
is not supported in the DBase III file specification, and
hence is not supported by most applications that implemented
the ESRI Shapefile 2D specification.
There are two potential changes that are applied to the .dbf
file of each selected shapefile set. The first is to change
the column type for any fields defined as "F" (floating
point) to "N" (numeric). This change is forward
compatible with later releases of DBase, and the decimal precision
of the original column is maintained. The second change is
to add an arbitrary column name to any columns that were published
w/o a name. In the case of the JDO boundary exports, the fourth
column has its name changed from "" (a null string)
to "W", and the column represents the area of the
exported boundary.
To operate the tool for simple shapefile corrections, navigate
to the target folder using the file explorer in the left hand
pane of the tool. The right hand pane will list all shapefiles
found within that folder. Select one or more shapefiles to
which the correction should be applied and click the "Correct"
button. The files are modified in place, and hence the application
of the correction is almost instantaneous.
There are two other optional tasks that can be performed with
the tool as well: Merging multiple shapefiles into a single
file, and exporting JDO boundaries to the new FODM resource
file format.
Merging Shapefiles
JDOffice exports all selected field boundaries as one boundary
per shapefile. Many applications can import these field boundaries
more efficiently if they were all in a single shapefile. The
JDO Boundary Tool utility has a "Merge" command that
can be used to accomplish this task. Select two or more shapefiles
that are to be merged, and click the Merge button. The shapefile
correction will be automatically applied to each of the selected
files and then the files will be validated for a common schema.
If all of the files selected have exactly the same column definitions
in the .dbf file the records and shapes from each individual
file will be concatenated into a new shapefile.
This tool should work to merge any shapefiles that have an identical
.dbf schema (column definition). Performance may be quite slow
if merging something like yield shapefiles, though.
Converting to FODM
The open Field Operation Data Model (FODM) syntax has a definition
for clients, farms, fields, cropzones, etc. As more companies
migrate to FODM for importing field operations data, it may
be more convenient to import JDOffice field boundaries as FODM
Domains (farms, fields, etc). Click the FODM button on the JDO
Boundary Tool utility to convert the selected field boundary
shapefiles into a single FODM Resource File (*.mrf) format.
This is an XML based format and the field boundaries are represented
within the file as Open GIS Well-Known-Text strings.
You can edit an FODM Resource File with notepad or any XML
editor. If you change the file extention to .xml, you can
quickly review the file contents in Internet Explorer.
Once the JDOffice Boundaries are converted into FODM domains,
your non-JDOffice crop recordkeeping/mapping system may be
able to import the entire client hierarchy with a single command.
| Installation Instructions | |
- We recommend you create a folder on your computer named
Third Party and within that folder, create a folder called
MapShots.
- Save the JD
Office Boundary Tool (9.71 mb) file to the ..\Third
Party\MapShots folder on your computer.
- After the file has completed downloading, open the ..\Third
Party\MapShots folder and double click the JDOBTSetup.010102.exe
file.
- To begin using the JDO Boundary Tool, go to Start|Programs|MapShots
and select JDO Boundary Tool.
- Operating instructions are provided by clicking the Help
button of the JDO Boundary Tool application.
- Review the JD
Creating Greenstar Boundaries document for instructions on using the tool to convert
shapefiles to Greenstar Boundaries.
- Support issues and comments may be directed to: Support@MapShots.com
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