CUBIZEN: Global Mapper, CityEngine & Creative Tech

Using the Show/Hide Attributes Tool in Global Mapper

Welcome back to the Global Mapper tutorial series. In our previous session, we touched upon the basics of the Layer Attribute Editor. Today, we will dive deeper into more advanced ways to manage and edit your data attributes efficiently.

Let's wrap up our look at the Attribute Editor (Attribute Editing Window). Open the file you saved yesterday and dock the Attribute Editor window to the right side of the screen. I’ll skip the very basic tasks like selecting, deselecting, or deleting features and focus on the more practical tools.

First, let's clean up our view by hiding unnecessary attributes. Click on the Show/Hide Attributes icon as shown above. This will open a selection window.

In this dialog, Check All enables all attributes, while Clear All disables them. For this exercise, check only KIND, NMLY, and SHAPE_AREA, then uncheck everything else and click OK.

Now, only the three selected attributes are visible. However, you might notice that the SHAPE_AREA values are partially cut off.

Simply double-click the column divider to automatically expand the width so that all values are fully visible.

How to Sort Attribute Data in Global Mapper

Sorting Attributes by Column Headers

That looks much better. Now, let's look at how to sort these values.

Sorting is easy: just click on the attribute name (header). Clicking once sorts them in ascending order, and clicking again switches to descending order. The small arrow icon next to the name indicates the current sorting direction.

How to Edit Attribute Values

Editing Individual Feature Attributes, Batch Editing Multiple Features

Changing a value is straightforward. click once, then click again after a short pause to enter edit mode. Type in the new value, and you're done.

But what if you need to change multiple values at once? Use Shift or Ctrl to select multiple rows, then right-click and select Edit Selected Feature(s)....

The Modify Selected Area Features window will appear. Let's try changing the SHAPE_AREA value to 100 for all selected objects.

In the Feature Attributes list, select SHAPE_AREA and click the Edit button. In the Edit Attribute/Value pop-up, enter "100" and click OK.

Click OK again in the main Modify window, and you will see the updated values applied to the list.

Synchronizing Attribute Editor with Map View

Feature Selection Sync and Filtering Options

Another useful feature is Synchronize Feature Selection with Main Window. When this is active, selecting an item in the list highlights it on the map, and vice versa. It’s a bit of a long name, but very handy!

The problem is that sometimes the selected items might be scattered across a long list and not visible on one screen. In that case, use the Only Show Selected Features toggle.

How to Add Custom Attributes in Global Mapper

Let's try adding a brand new attribute, perhaps something like "XXX".

Click the New Attribute button. A dialog will appear where you can define the name and the default value.

You can also decide what to do if the attribute already exists: do nothing, update only empty ones, or update all. Click OK once you've set your parameters.

As you can see, the "XXX" column has been added with our specified value. It's quite simple, isn't it?

There are also Search and Calculate Attributes tools (circled in the image above). These are powerful features that deserve their own dedicated session, so I'll cover them later when I have more time.

That's it for today!