Creating and maintaining your GIS data in a 3D view is crucial to studying and learning about your data in 3D. New data may arrive in other file formats or you may be manually digitizing features. Regardless, ArcGIS 3D Analyst has tools to create, maintain, and organize your data.
The standard editing environment is available inside both ArcGlobe and ArcScene, enabling the creation and maintenance of z-aware GIS features. Editing in 3D offers the following:
- Start editing, stop editing, save edits, use undo and redo functions, and do other standard edit management tasks in 3D.
- The classic snapping environment is also supported, as are precision-creation options such as parallel, perpendicular, duplicate vertical, and absolute XYZ.
- Create and delete individual features. This includes the creation and storage of vertical lines in the geodatabase and shapefiles.
- Move, rotate, scale, and replace feature geometry (higher-level geometry edits to features). This includes the ability to place 3D models (for example, COLLADA files) directly into the 3D view as new multipatch features, then move/scale/rotate them on the landscape.
There are also additional tools for creating and maintaining terrain datasets (particularly when working with lidar data sources) and editing TIN datasets using the TIN editing toolbar in ArcMap.