Latest Contributions by TimMinter1

Thanks Elliott.  Good candidate.  From a bit of "research" (e.g. believing likely content I read on the web), it looks like the discrete graphics card may need to be marketed toward AutoCAD, 3D design, etc., rather than gaming purposes.  Your K3100M above leads me in a useful direction.  Also, from previous poking about in Intel's ARK, it looks like I'm limited to 4 cores / 8 threads for now.  Finally, I find the 17" class of notebooks/laptops to be just too huge for my preference, so I'll size down in the Precision Mobile Workstation family for candidates. ... View more

I have a boolean weighting: notebook = 1 desktop = 0 ... View more

hi lore, As with most ArcGIS things, there are usually several ways to get where you want to go.  After a brief review of your description, it looks to me like you can use ArcToolbox tools to do the geoprocessing you need to do. Use your shapefile that delineates the area for your analysis to clip the DEM.  The output is just the data you need to analyze.  So, if you have Spatial Analyst extension, check into the Extract by Mask tool.  You may also be able to use the Data Management Tools > Raster > Raster Processing > Clip tool to do the same thing, but it looks like you'll have to convert your shapefile with the boundary to a raster (there's a tool for that under Conversion Tools). Afterwards, to get your direction of declination ("aspect" in geo-parlance), you'll need to use the 3D Analyst extension and run the Aspect tool. That should do it for you. A friendly suggestion based on a few years of experience - go at these assignments with a mindset of "there's a way to do it, I just need to figure out what that way is."  Personally, I drag up my "find a way" mindset and then dive head first into the help documentation.  At each software upgrade, I take a few hours to review the "what's new" section, then poke around in the help again to see where stuff has been moved and generally just refresh my familiarity with it. Hit the Help. Cheers and happy surface analysis! tim ... View more