Latest Contributions by SeanHlousek

Misti, Thank You for the link. That is a good source for various Legend Properties and ways to customize legends. The functionality I was originally looking for is still not present in Pro. (That I am aware of). I'd like to be able to set "universal" default legend properties so when I create a new legend SOME of the properties will already be set. I'd like this functionality at the application, (not project), level. For example, I make my legends with a solid, (usually grey) background, with a .1 inch X and Y border and background gap. The default setting in Pro is a transparent background with no X or Y offset so EVERY time I create a legend, I am re-setting these values. This example is just three settings and like you say, Pro DOES offer some good customization. (The link you provided goes into details on those controls). But, that level of customization means there are a LOT of settings that require tweaking or adjusting with each legend you create. I'd like to be able to set some of those settings "globally" so I have to do less "legend-tweaking" with each one I create. I agree with you that Legend control has improved between Arc Map and Pro, (although I still miss the check-box where I could define at which point in legend items where a new column would begin). I'd just like some ability to set behaviors for all of my projects so I don't have to repeat the same steps. By The Way: Since the posting of this idea I have learned that you CAN control which items are included in a new legend by highlighting the items you wish to include in your Table of Contents. If you do not highlight any items, Pro includes ALL Items by default. This functionality has saved me a LOT of time in the past couple of years! -Sean ... View more

Andrew, The way I handle this is to change the description of the elements in the symbology interface. The Legend updates from that. So if I’m following your example, if you symbolize by NFIRS number, you’ll need to change the description of the number in the symbology. So if NFIRS number is 100 but that means “South Metro Fire District” for example, you’d click on the NFIRS symbology interface and in the Symbology description , right-click and change the description from 100 to “South Metro Fire District”. That change will update your legend. Not as easy or intuitive as ArcMap but it gets the legend to show the way you expect. Hope that helps. Sean Hlousek GIS Manager 1001 17th Street Suite 1250 Denver CO 80203 39°44’56.52” 104°59’36.43” 303-226-9516 (O) 303-565-0224 (M) ... View more

Kory, Where is this in the pipeline? Is it still mid-term or has it graduated to near-term?  The Legend controls, (and frankly all Layout graphics-elements), should behave similar to Microsoft Power Point where we can resize quickly by dragging on a corner.  This is quick, easy, and most importantly to ESRI, it's intuitive for users getting familiar with ArcGIS PRO.   This functionality should work with legends, and any text-box elements or map surrounds in Layout.  (If it already works with some or all layout elements then is should ABSOLUTELY work with Legends if for no other reason than for resizing controls to remain consistent).   ... View more

"....And does there need to be another button click (APPLY) when changing the font size?...." This.   I've been working with Pro now long enough that I'm producing paper products with it and I do think it's faster but your example of the APPLY button for font changes is one of several small things that you notice when trying to use the product for hard copy cartographic production.  If anything, let me set a whole bunch of different properties: fonts, colors, symbology and THEN hit an APPLY button to apply ALL changes in one re-draw.  Instead, I'm forced to wait for the redraw on every single change and the salt in the wound is I need to physically confirm I am "ready to wait again".  It's very frustrating. At least they've added the pause redraw function but that doesn't help when changing properties. Also, as of 2.5 there is still not a way to set a "standard" legend, application (all projects), wide.  I just want to be able to set all of my legend properties to a standard look and when I insert the legend it always starts with those settings. I can customize it from there but let me "set my look".   At the very least, Pro should behave like Power Point when it comes to graphic elements. As it is now, I build base maps in Arc and then export out .jpg's and "finish" maps in Power Point for many workflows.   Pro should be BETTER than Power Point in these respects, and it's not even equal to it.  I will say that the ESRI team is making good changes with each update but we haven't seen many improvements to making paper maps. We need a BIG update to bring Pro finishing capabilities to at least Power Point levels.   ... View more

Still waiting on IT. Sometimes these things move on “geologic” time frames in my organization. Apparently IT is trying to get confirmation that the processor they have picked will work in my current system. They are waiting on whoever/whatever organization is giving them that information. Then I need budget approval and then I’ll get the upgrade. I did follow up with ESRI on the fact that I ran the CanYounRunIt application on my current system and this time it came back as capable, (though just at spec). I’m not sure why it reported my machine was capable when I ran it again. I’d still like the upgrade so I’m above and beyond spec. ESRI also reported that they cannot replicate the spinning wheel issue I have so that could be related to the processor in some way as well. I’ll follow up here with results – but it might be a while yet. -Sean ... View more

John, I honestly question whether they really KNOW ideal specs. I think us early adopters if the tech might be be helping to figure that out. (I'm partially serious, but hopefully joking??) ... View more

It's an example of why the people actually doing the work on Arc should build the machine and not IT. I've learned that lesson. Sean ... View more

The CPU IS a marginal choice for Pro (I didn’t make that choice). As I say, I’m advocating for an upgrade that will perform better. That is why I decided to test a project on my home machine. I can see the difference and it IS an improvement but there still seems to be some sort of , for lack of a better term, “Project Bloat”, that is occurring with projects with many elements. I wanted to share my experience, (even though the CPU is making my experience worse than it would be), with the community in case others are experiencing similar or the same issues. I remember in 2002 when I started working with ESRI people were struggling with the transition from ArcView to ArcMap. I don’t know if that transition was as challenging as this one but at some point, the majority of users were using ArcMap and presumably “satisfied” with it. Hopefully threads like this one will help all of us work a little bit more efficiently in the world of PRO in a few years. ... View more

Well, Us users DO report back on the application features and bugs and we work for free…… (In fact we pay to use the product) It’s a hell of a business model. shrug ... View more

Tom, They haven’t assigned a bug number to this yet but the case# is #02465137 It seems I need to call Tech support again because upon re-running the “CanYouRunIt” application, it says my machine passes. (Oh how much I “enjoy” the Tech Support experience….. /s) Here is a screenshot of my specs. ... View more

32gb of Ram. Yes, on clearing the cache and saving-as. I experienced the same behavior. Sean ... View more

John, I have been experiencing similar issues but mine have been going on since before the New Year. I called ESRI Tech Support and they claim my CPU speed is a slightly below spec so I am at a stand-still with regards to technical support. I am working on upping my CPU, but it should be noted that Tech Support IS able to replicate the issues I am experiencing. However instead of 10-15 minutes to open a project they are reporting that their load times are about 7 minutes. I find 7 minutes to open a project unacceptable. I went a step further and bought a personal-use license at home where I have a computer well above specs. I packaged the project and opened it at home and find that load times are about 6 minutes and 30 seconds. I still find this unacceptable time to open a project especially since one of the marketing points ESRI made about Pro is that Projects can get as large as necessary. My experience with Pro is that large projects cause performance issues Here is what I have observed: Projects with few elements in them, (Elements, in this case being Maps, Layouts, Database connections and Toolboxes), seem to open quickly and navigation within the project including opening maps and Layouts perform to my satisfaction. (Typically under 1 minute to open the project and anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to open a map or a layout depending on the complexity. I do have some very graphics-intensive layouts and maps so 3 minutes is acceptable for these complex layouts and maps). Projects with many elements in them, (About 10-12+ elements), open slowly and the performance is unsatisfactory. My biggest projects with about 80-90 elements in them take 10-15 minutes to open. That time is longer when any map or layout is left open in the project. Projects with fewer elements open faster, projects with more elements open more slowly. Saving and closing times are also longer for bigger projects. Second: In any project, large/complex or small/simple, I experience the Windows Spinning Wheel. This happens immediately after opening the project when I attempt to click on a map or a layout. The spinning wheel lasts 2-3 minutes during which time, no elements can be selected or interfaced with in any way. (It is the Windows 10 version of “grayed-out” selections). After the elements “un-gray” and the spinning wheel disappears, performance is as you would expect. I have the same behavior on my machine at home. Tech Support did not address this specific issue because my CPU speed is slightly below spec. (But again, I can replicate this at home with a machine that is above spec). My interpretation is that there is something going on with the software and that these issues are rooted there. I admit that hardware plays a role, and seems to make the performance worse, but it is not the root cause of these issues. In the mean-time I need to complete my work in a timely manner so I have made the decision to completely alter the way I use ArcGIS Pro. I now treat most projects like ArcMap .mxd’s. That is I typically have 10 or less elements in each project. I manage projects similar to how I used to manage .mxd’s because in my experience large project size slows down my work too much. This is unfortunate because I enjoy the project interface and being able to organize and manage my data within “project containers” but when I can’t get the system to work in an acceptable manner, it became necessary to alter how I use the software. Incidentally this has lead to a pleasant realization: Since ESRI can’t figure out how to get modified and created date attributes to populate in the catalog view or catalog pane with respect to Maps and layouts, treating projects more like .mxd’s makes data management easier since windows DOES show modified dates for the directories containing projects. Since my projects are now very simple, standard and clear naming of projects along with windows modified dates has made data management quite a bit easier. If these issues are addressed in the future I’d still like to use PRO as ESRI had intended but in the mean-time this solution is working for my work-flows. -Sean ... View more

Charley, While that the ESRI UC I spoke with some of the development team about this and the summary is that, back in July they did not expect they would add this functionality.  The reasoning is that Pro works differently then ArcMap in the way it interfaces with the windows file system. Apparently in the past, it was possible to get the details about modifications from the operating system but this is no longer possible in Pro. That said, I agree with you that this feature needs to be added.  If the operating system cannot be used to add this information, then ESRI needs to engineer a new way for this to happen.  I have been using Pro extensively over the past year and a few of my projects are quiet large. Dates, both creation and modification, are VERY helpful to data management. I hope they will find a solution or that a third party will offer us a good extension/add-in/product to make it happen.  ... View more

Kory, Can you expand on how 2.5 will improve project performance where we have many maps and layouts? I am experiencing significant slow downs with my projects (which have grown over the past year). I have been working around the problem by using one project as a “working” project where I do all my editing and then housing all of my layouts that I export out as PDF’s or .jpgs in another separate (large) project. This way I can at least edit things efficiently although my “export” projects can take 3-5 minutes to load versus about 20-30 seconds for my editing projects (which contain one map with all the layers I need to edit). I’ve also noticed that closing all layouts and maps in my “export” project is critical. If I leave anything open when I save and close the project can take 10+ minutes to load. Its good to hear that ESRI is aware of the project size issue and is working on it. Sean Hlousek GIS Manager 1001 17th Street Suite 1250 Denver CO 80203 39°44’56.52” 104°59’36.43” 303-226-9516 (O) 303-565-0224 (M) ... View more

This is a good suggestion. I would add that additional options for identifying catalog items would be useful not just for database connections but for data types.    For example in this case "data-source":  If I have a series of maps/layouts that access three or four different geodatabases it would be great if those geodatabases could be color-coded so i knew where each feature class originated just by looking at the color of the feature class text in catalog.  Perhaps my Roads geodatabase is Red, and My Parcels Geodatabase is Green.  Anytime I add a feature class from either those feature classes show up as the corresponding colors (in their text descriptions) in Catalog view.  That way if a user make a custom road or parcel  feature class outside of the dedicated geodatabase it's easy for an administrator to see the the source of the feature class in a map or layout is outside of that dedicated geodatabase. Any options that can be added for increased organization would be welcome especially since we cannot see the date of the last modification of any data in catalog view.  ... View more