Pitney Bowes MapInfo Professional - Manual (Page 384)

Putting Latitude/Longitude Coordinates on a Map
You may have a file that already contains X and Y coordinates, but not the point objects themselves that
you want to display in MapInfo Professional. While the geographic information exists in the table, MapInfo
Professional needs to create points to represent these coordinates before displaying them in a Map
window. The Create Points command under the Table menu allows you to create points for each record
in your database that has X-Y coordinate information.
MapInfo Professional uses the coordinate fields in your table to create point objects. Records
that already have graphic objects associated with them will be skipped during the Create Points
operation. Note:
For example, you have a table showing transmitter tower locations that was created by recording
coordinates using a global positioning system. You want to display the locations on a map in MapInfo
Professional. The table already has X and Y coordinate information but MapInfo Professional cannot
display this information until you create points for that coordinate data that MapInfo Professional can
read.
For more information, see the Putting Latitude/Longitude Coordinates on a Map in the Help System.
This section also contains these topics:
• Creating Points from an Excel or Lotus Table
• Creating Points from a Longitude/Latitude
• Creating Points in a Projection
For more about the Degree Converter tool, see the Tools section of the Help System.
Dispersing Points Located in the Same Place
Depending on how you have geocoded your table, you may have several points that are placed at the
same location, making it difficult to tell if you are viewing one point or many. For example, if you geocode
a table of students by census tract, and view the results on your map, it appears that there is one dot at
the center of each tract when there actually may be several there. To see all of your data, you may want
to disperse the points over a small area. There are three methods for dispersing points: the Disperse
Points tool (a tool that comes with MapInfo Professional), equal dispersion, and dispersion to the right.
For specific instructions, see the Dispersing Points Located in the Same Place in the Help System.
Creating Points for Intersections
Many people working with street files are often interested in information that is located at intersections.
For some, their only concern is the intersections. In MapInfo Professional you can geocode to intersections
in your street file with the Geocode command, but it would be easier to work with a table that contained
only intersections. For example, a municipality is interested in tracking the types of traffic control devices
at each street intersection. It would be beneficial for them to make an entire layer that contains the
intersection of every street.
For specific instructions, see Creating Points for Intersections in the Help System.
Geocoding Data using a Server
Using the MapMarker and Envinsa Web Services, you have more choices for geocoding. For example,
you can choose to geocode your records by street address or by postal code centroid, or by geographic
centroids. If you have geocoded some records and some did not geocode successfully, you can set
fallback conditions to locate those records. If you geocode and there are no results, poor results, or
MapInfo Professional 12.5 384
Putting Latitude/Longitude Coordinates on a Map