I just wanted to say that you all rock! Thanks for coming to my rescue with these wonderful thoughts on polygon expansion versus buffer creation. It has been a helpful discussion and I appreciate your time! We have a ton of cities across the country to deal with, so I think a buffer will have to suffice. My boss has been convinced. Thanks!
Carri -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 1:59 PM To: Carri Heisler Subject: Re: MI-L Increasing polygon size uniformly Carri, The dilemma you have is whether or not you wish just to increase the outside area of the polygon by a consistent offset distance from the existing polygon, or do you want to expand the polygon proportionally. The buffering will create rounded corners, if you set your radius to 2 miles then everything will have a two mile radius buffer and the corner points will become curves. A great deal more math is involved if you wish to enlarge the polygon and keep the lines parallel but offset by 2 miles. You would have to forget the corners since they would move diagonally appoximately 2.8 miles from the original location if it was a right angle corner. (Blame Pythagorus for that one). The line segments would be offset in a parallel fashion by the two mile distance but they would have to be extended to intersect with the adjacent line segments. You could always run the buffers and then manually edit the corners to square them up if you feel it would produce a better product. I hope I didn't muddle up the issue for even more. Jon Gramm
