Search Vector Data

The Search By Attribute, Name, and Description command allows for searching for features in all loaded vector data by attribute value, name, feature index within the layer, and description /type. When selected, the Search Vector Data (below) dialog is displayed.

  The Search Vector Data dialog displays a list of all of the vector features (areas, lines, points and/or lidar) which match the specified Search Criteria. The Search Criteria can be applied to any attribute value of the loaded features, the display label field, or the description/ type field.

Types to Search

In the Types to Search section of the dialog, feature types may be selected or disabled to allow the user to include or exclude Areas, Lines, Points or Lidar data from searches.

Select Layer(s) to Search

In the Select Layer(s) to Search field, the search can be limited to specific layers, or the extent of data visible on the screen*.

Search Criteria

Comparisons to the Compare Value can be done either textually or numerically. For text equal and not-equal searches, the Compare Value field can contain the ? and * wildcard characters.

In addition, one can control which vector object types (area, line, and/or point) to include in the search and also whether to limit the search to those features that are on-screen.

Once you have your Search Criteria set how you want for the search, press the New Search button to actually perform the search and display the matching results in the results list. The results will be sorted in ascending order by the names of the features by default, but you can click on any column header to sort the results by the values in that column. Clicking the same column header again will reverse the order of the sort. You can also press the Search in Existing Results button to apply the new search criteria to the existing results. Using this you can create complicated searches based on multiple criteria.

If Search in Selected Features is used, the search will only be performed on features that are selected in the results list.

The results of the search will still be selected when the search is complete.

Double-clicking on an item in the list will recenter the view on that object.

The Edit Selected button displays a dialog allowing the user to modify the name, feature type, and drawing style of any features selected.

The Delete Selected button will mark all selected features as deleted.

Select All will select all features in the dialog, and Clear Selection will clear all currently selected features.

Use the option to Save Selected to CSV... to save the currently selected features to a new CSV file.

Right-click Context Menu

Right- click on the results list to see the following additional options.

STATS- Report Statistics for Values of Attribute

Right-click on a numeric column in the Vector Search and choose this option to see a dialog report of the Count of features that contain a value for the attribute, and Minimum, Maximum, Average, Standard Deviation and Sum of the attribute values. The results will also be copied to the Windows clipboard.

Copy the Selected Features to the Clipboard

The geometric features, including attributes, will be copied to the Global Mapper clipboard. They may be pasted to a new layer in the current Global Mapper workspace, or a new instance of Global Mapper using the CTRL+V keyboard shortcut or the Edit Menu.

Copy the Selected Features to the Clipboard as Text

The attribute table for the selected features will be coped to the Windows clipboard as comma delimited values.

If multiple line features are selected in the results list, the context menu will contain an option to combine those line features into new line features if the selected lines connect at their endpoints. Options for copying the selected features to the clipboard and selecting the selected search results with the Digitizer Tool for further editing will also appear if any results are selected.

ADVANCED USERS: You can change the default search string from '*' to whatever you want by creating a new registry string value with the desired default search string at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Global Mapper\DefaultVectorSearchStr".

* There is a limitation on the number of features being used in the search. For Global Mapper 32-bit the feature limit is 1 million, for Global Mapper 64-bit the feature limit is 5 million.  To search Lidar data with more than the maximum number of features, you will have to use the 'Search Onscreen Features Only' option, and zoom in the viewer to reduce the number of features.