Overlapping viewshadows from custom topo?

[JohnWynn]

Hello, I'm a new user and am wondering if ArcGIS can do the following:

I need to create a highly detailed topo of a small residential property and create viewshadows from 6 different viewpoints with the goal being to see which areas on the property can not be seen from the 6 viewpoints. The property is in a highly regulated coastal area where new structures need to be hidden from view. The viewpoints should all be about the height of a normal person - let's say 5' for example.

I have a bitmapped topo that was created for us for this project. It was supplied as a PDF but I can convert it to a jpg, tiff, psd or similar in Photoshop. It's a 212.3mb size file.

So I have two questions:

1.   Can ArcGIS create this kind of overlapping viewshadow, combining viewshadows from 6 different viewpoints?

2. Can ArcGIS import our custom made topo from a PDF, jpg, tiff, psd or similar?

Thank you,

John

[AdrianWelsh]

Hi John,

If you have access to ArcGIS and a Spatial Analyst license, you can use the Viewshed analysis tool to create the viewsheds for the different areas:

Using Viewshed and Observer Points for visibility analysis—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop 

(you can set 'viewer' height too)

As for the the topo, ArcGIS can bring in an image and it can be georeferenced (Fundamentals of georeferencing a raster dataset—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop ) but it won't keep the topo line values. It would be best if you had the topo in the form of a DEM or contour lines as a shapefile or geodatabase file. Do you have this original data?