Hawth's Analysis Tools for ArcGIS are now available on the computers in Fayerweather 202. These are a collection of easy-to-use tools for GIS analysis, most of which are not available within the ArcToolbox. They include tools for rasters, vectors, analysis, and sampling. This tutorial will walk you through converting locations to paths, which will "connect the dots" of points with polylines.

1. For information on Hawth's Analysis Tools, descriptions of the toolsets, and instructions for how to use them, visit the Spatial Ecology website at http://www.spatialecology.com/htools/tooldesc.php.

2. Set up Hawth's Analysis Tools, following the instructions of this tutorial.

3. Add your point feature to your map project in ArcMap. You must have a "sorted" data layer to use this tool. A sorted file will have a unique field that orders your data. This may be sequential numbering or chronological information, and will indicate in which order points should be connected with the polylines.

4. After you've added your sorted point data file, access the "Convert Locations to Paths" tool by clicking on the Hawth's Tools drop-down menu > Animal Movements > Convert Locations to Paths (points to lines).

5. The following dialogue box will appear. In this example, I am visualizing a network of New York City schools.

In the "input" box, choose your point file from the drop-down list.

Under "Path Options," choose whether to create a single path (one polyline with each segment representing the path between points) or multiple paths. For this tutorial, we will leave the default single path option.

Under "Ordering," choose whether your data is sorted chronologically (which is usually the case for data points gathered via a GPS unit) or if it needs to be sorted by one of the fields in the attribute table. For this tutorial, the data points are sorted by unique ID numbers.

Lastly, choose the name and locatio for the output shapefile.

6. Click OK. Your output polyline shapefile should appear when the process is successfully completed.