
A polyface tends to be the most common three-dimensional shape, which is made up of three-dimensional polygons and creates a surface. Volume: Volume is when your goal is to represent a three-dimensional shape. An important part to remember about the polygon feature is that the first and last vertices must always reach the same place. Polygon: Polygon features are used to show objects like islands, dams, land boundaries, and more. If you decide to use polygon data, you will use a layer of lines to form a connection and create an enclosed area. When more than two vertices are joined, you will then have what is called a “line of lines,” or a polyline. A line makes sense when you would like to show features such as roads, walking paths, and rivers. When you make two vertices connect, a line will be formed. Line: The line data type usually contains two or more vertices (the letters or edges). If you do not have a lot of time, point is the data type that takes the least amount of time, but it is not recommended for large scale maps. Point features consist of X, Y, and, sometimes, Z coordinates. Point works best depending on how far you are from the specific feature, how much time you have, and the type of feature that you are wanting to put on your GIS application. Point: Using point for your vector data is your decision to make. By watching this video, you will learn how vector data is structured, how vector features are created, the object model of vector data, and the precision of vector calculations. If you are interested in learning more about GIS vector data, Civil Gem offers an excellent video on their YouTube Channel. This type of data is tedious and does require careful, detail oriented data collection. It also needs to be constantly updated to remain up to date, reliable, and accurate. It also can be used to answer difficult questions without going to the landscape site.ĭisadvantages: A common disadvantage of vector data is that it can be collected at different scales which may interfere with the process and its accuracy. The different types of vector data are point, line, or polygon.Īdvantages: An advantage of vector data is that it can be used to map out an entire landscape as well as its features. The geometry typically consists of vertices, which are X, Y, and Z coordinates and form into specific landscape features. This can help individuals answer the following questions: where is the best place to put a business in the area, how many houses are at risk of a flood, how many people live in this specific area, and more.įormats: Vector data usually is represented by using geometry. Main Purpose/ Specification: The main purpose is to be able to add everything that the human eye can see in a visual location to a GIS application.


This means that anything that you can visually see in a landscape, such as trees, houses, and rivers, can be represented in a GIS application. What exactly is the vector type of data?ĭefinition: Vector data is the process of representing real world objects and features within the GIS field. This data is continuously being assessed and evaluated in a variety of different fields, but GIS experts are more prominent users of the term. Spatial data is important, as it is data that contains information about locations on the surface of the Earth. Metadata consists of information involving scale, accuracy, projection, data source, manipulations, and how the data is obtained.įor the purpose of this article, I will be focusing solely on spatial data since it involves vector and raster data. It provides characteristics about the spatial data. Attribute data is made up of details such as the information that explains “where”, “what”, and “why”.

Vector data, raster data, images, Triangular Irregular Networks (TINs), and terrain datasets are all apart of Spatial data. There are three different types of GIS data, which include spatial, attribute, and metadata. What are the different types of GIS data? I will also offer links to various YouTube videos in case you need to visually see the difference of vector data vs raster data. In this article, I will provide details about the two different types of data, give reviews about the data’s types, explain what makes them different, and more. You may be interested to know more about vector and raster data.
