tree canopies

[PaulWallace]

I would like to display a simple tree canopy using four circles to represent the spread N,E,S and W about a point plotted in a point shapefile. The four circles will have the respective diameters of the N, E, S and W in the fields in the attribute table. The offset of the circles will be half of the N, E, S and W values in their respective directions. Has anyone done this?
Can anyone tell me exactly how to using ArcGIS please?
Cheers, in anticipation, Paul Wallace.

[DavidWilliams]

Hi Paul, off the top of my head,
Add four new fields to your data and calculate the offsets N, E, S and W (e.g. Eoffset = Xcoord + E/2)
then generate a point at each location (Eoffset,Ycoord) and buffer them by field (selecting the diameter) and dissolve

[PaulWallace]

Thankyou for that. I've done the first part, however the bit I thought would be easy, making new points from co-ordinates created in the fields of the attribute table I can't do!
Could you help me out with that please? Cheers, Paul Wallace.

[FranklinEbner]

You could create a new layer from x,y values stored in a table in ArcCatalog (right-click layer) or you could plot points using the 'Go To XY' tool in ArcMap and I think you could convert those into a dataset.  Just the methods I thought of quickly, there are probably more and perhaps easier methods.

[DavidWilliams]

Hi Paul,
Dump your attribute table out to a dbf file and then use this to add x,y.