Geotrace - Can I limit the number of vertices? extract point?

Question

Hello all,

I have a couple of questions on utilizing Geotrace question.

I tried to capture the line features that are created by points in repeat, but it did not seem working with webform unfortunately (my questions is here). My intention was creating flight paths based on city names/locations that users enter.

Since the main dataset I need is line features, I decided to go with geotrace directly that will ask users to create lines. However, creating line maybe tricky for new users, for example users may click more than needed. To prevent this, is there any way that I can limit the number of vertices that users enter?

I am also wondering if there is any way that I can extract the x, y of the location that users click, and create point features as related table. For example, the first click location is passed as 'origin' and the second click as 'destination'.

Cheers,

K

KerryKang · Answer

Hello Zachary Sutherby‌, thank you for your comments! They are all great suggestions. I will create a post on ArcGIS Ideas page.

By the way, I was not able to use repeat points as my app should work on the web form, so I had to go with creating a line with method=vertex to create straight lines.

Thanks.

Kerry

ZacharySutherby · Answer

Hello Kerry Kang‌,

If you were using repeated geopoints to calculate the geotrace question you can set a repeat count which will limit the number of repeats that can be submitted.

Regarding limiting the number of vertices to my knowledge there is not a way to limit this outside of limiting repeated geopoints. An alternative may be to use the method=sketch capture method as that may be a little easier of a way to capture the line.

If I may ask can you elaborate some more on the ideal implementation of limiting vertices? Would a column in the XLSForm similar to a repeat count, but for geotrace and geoshape be ideal? For example if I set the vertex count to 5 then all geotrace features that are created are limited to 5 vertices. Alternatively would specifying a specific spatial distance between vertices be preferred? If I specify 10 feet for example as my vertex buffer and a vertex is placed within that buffer a message pops up requesting it to be placed further away.

As for extracting the XY for each vertex that would require something along the lines of pulldata("@geotrace",...) which currently is not supported. I would suggest logging a case with Esri Technical Support requesting an Enhancement for this functionality, or posting to the ArcGIS Ideas page. Please use this link for reference: https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2019/09/26/survey123-tricks-of-the-trade-lines-and-polygons#comment-819…

A more immediate solution would be to use a custom JavaScript function to extract the properties of the Geotrace and return the XY coordinates.

Thank you,

Zach