Latest Contributions by RachaelChasse

It's gotten even worse now.  I use 11x17 layouts, and the highest DPI I can successfully export for the USGS Topo is around 50.  My guess is there is some kind of premium membership is coming, just like they got rid of custom reports in Business Analyst online unless you started paying more money.  I miss my old ArcMap where I could reliably export a wall sized map, and the old ESRI where any features taken away were usually replaced with better ones for the same amount of money. 😞 ... View more

Interesting...of all the capabilities of this product, you'd think changing the pin color would be on the list somewhere without needing to use a different application.  I'd think this is worthy of a feature request at least. ... View more

I had similar issues when using the "Visible Rows" option on a table frame.  When I initially inserted the table frame, the feature was working fine.  I then renamed some fields in the attribute table that the table frame was based on.  As soon as I did this, Visible Rows returned no results...but I was able to change the setting and see all records in the dataset. I tried adding another copy of the same feature set to the map, and switched the table frame to pull from the new copy.  Interestingly, Visible Rows worked--but the old field names were listed on the table frame.  The attribute table for the copy had the updated field names, though. What "solved" this for me was to export the feature set as a new feature set.  I could bring this newly exported data into the map and successfully use Visible Rows as expected.  Something about changing the field names seems to have triggered this, and starting with a fresh export seems to have worked. ... View more

It is SO disappointing that ESRI has not even responded to this private link sharing issue after over 5 years, especially when it is now such a universal offering by SAAS companies.  If they have not addressed this issue by now, they are not likely to address it.  If ESRI can manage things like client secrets, tokens, and passing credentials for their own proprietary data, they can certainly manage the coding for a private link/sharing option for their subscribers. I work for a company that creates maps that include our own proprietary, private data for clients outside our organization. We are largely handcuffed to using ArcGIS Pro to provide our clients with static print or electronic maps because it is still the only way to share this information without making it public--or making each client set up their own ArcGIS Online account.  We pay for a subscription that includes Story Maps, Web Apps, Experience Builder, Dashboards--all of which can't be used in our line of business because of the public / private sharing issue. It's horrifying to admit how much time I have spent building maps and apps for clients--only to find out that even years later we are STILL unable to appropriately share it with our clients!  ... View more

ESRI had reported on Run ArcGIS Pro on a Mac—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop that it was the underlying MacOS that didn't support the minimum DirectX version--can you confirm that you are running ArcGIS Pro 2.3 or higher? If so...the new Windows machine I broke down and purchased last month due to the DirectX version problem is no longer needed?!  Eeeesh, how to explain THAT to the boss? Glad to hear that the Parallels VM is working for you again!  I know I really miss having the simplicity of a one-box workflow. ... View more

I am also running ArcGIS Pro on a Mac machine with 4GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB RAM and an AMD Radeon R9 Graphics with 4GB of VRAM.  I wouldn't recommend using specs any lower than this in a dual OS environment, especially if both systems run graphics intense software.   The upgrade timeline question above is interesting.  I have been running a system like this since 2013.  I have upgraded my equipment twice in that time, and am close to needing a third--so about every 2-3 years.  My previous machines get reallocated to other users in our organization as they still function well for normal use.  Remember--you have TWO OS's worth of apps and updates, each one usually upping the minimum specs, two OS's running backup routines, two of pretty much everything.  Would I consider two separate machines?  Not for my personal workflow.  I can say that installing Windows on Bootcamp is essential to using the software successfully, and that Parallels has been the best product for virtualizing the Bootcamp partition.  I had problems using VMWare for this purpose and needed to change. I had to experiment with several settings under the CPU and Graphics menus on Parallels to optimize performance.  Once the settings on Parallels were "dialed in" I found near-native performance.   I have also found that on occasion, software updates can throw things out of whack again.  The trouble is finding which software is responsible:  ESRI, Windows, or Parallels.  This usually results in my CPU frequently hitting 100% when the map redraws--or even when the mouse pointer is moved across the screen.  Certain updates seem to require me to increase the RAM and CPU that I dedicate to the virtual machine. Another helpful thing is to watch where you save your project and source files with this setup.  I had been saving to what I thought was my "My Documents" folder.  If I inspected the pathway, I noticed that the path began with my Mac computer.  If you manually browse to C:\Users\User Name\Documents, you are without a doubt saving on what the system considers to be the C:\ drive (aka local).  At minimum, it is a good practice that helps rule out one cause of potential problems. ... View more

I use the Vector Tile Style Editor (BETA) as well.  This tool does a good job of customizing many style elements (color, visibility, font size, line thickness, transparency) in a visual editor format. I have been using the following approach to using custom vector base maps with my own map data: 1.  Use the vector tile style editor to style a vector map with only the background elements visible (land, water 2.  Use the vector tile style editor to style a vector map with only the foreground (labels, roads, boundaries) visible From there I go into either ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Pro and add both vector tile layers to the map.  This two layer map can now have custom layers added, and they can be stacked beneath roads/labels if needed. This generally works well, though a few things have cropped up: --Updates made through the vector tile style editor can take awhile to show up in AGOL or Pro--even with refreshing --The style editor has poor label placement customization compared to Pro / maplex.  In some cases I revert back to my old road labels layer --The vector tile style editor web page seems to use a large amount of memory --The vector base maps provided by ESRI don't always line up well with the other data sets that I often use  The style editor is still in BETA and these things can be expected.  I can't find a discussion / idea board on the ESRI community for it yet, but it would be helpful to have one if there is serious development going on with the product.   ... View more

Retaining a bezier (rather than converting the bezier to vertices) would help reduce the PDF size, as you have said. What I have noticed, though, is that a lot of publicly available data (EX: GIS data from municipalities) seems to have been created without bezier curves to begin with.  The data has a large number of vertices at point of origin.  I'm not sure it's feasible to have software generate bezier data where it didn't exist before. We have been getting around the large file sizes by doing two things: 1.  Testing out the use of stylized vector base maps that are already optimized.  There are some layers that I turn off labeling on the base map and bring in my own because I can refine the label placement better (EX: Highway Shields / road labels).   2.  Exporting the PDF from ArcGIS Pro, then opening the file in Acrobat Pro.  From there I go to File / Save As Other / Reduced File Size PDF.  This seemed to handle vector data better than "Optimize".  It is still not as small as your AutoCAD example, but it was still a vast improvement. You can also experiment with your layout size in ArcGIS Pro.  If your Pro layout is 24x36 you'll need to work a lot harder to get to a reasonable file size.  I find that an 11x17 layout, exported at high quality, is more than enough to make plotter sized enlargements from--especially if most of the data is vector.  Using this layout size, combined with using Acrobat to reduce the file size, has reigned this in enough to have a fairly usable workflow while waiting for another solution. Regarding rasterizing, Pro already does this reasonably well and it is fairly easy to get a good raster image if you start with a good quality vector.  While the Output as Image option added will at least help those without other graphics software to do this task, I hope that ESRI's development focus will continue to be on VECTOR optimization / generalization at export. ... View more

I would agree that Pro currently benefits "light" GIS users more than ones with a more robust set of needs, especially since workflow conversion for these users is far less cumbersone.  I started out using ArcMap several years before Pro was launched.  While the program was powerful, I felt I was always endlessly clicking to dialogs within dialogs to make simple symbology and label style changes.  ArcMap was powerful for making geodata from scratch, but in my case we were mostly using preexisting geodata and needed to to customize, style, add some basic custom data, and run some light analysis.  Our needs are simple, compared to someone who is creating these files from scratch or running complex models. We had performance issues at the beginning, partly because I was running Pro on a virtual machine on a Mac.  Most of this has been ironed out, and I have been happy with the performance of the product in recent versions.  I have converted my entire workflow to the Pro product, and have been using it exclusively for over a year. I often use Adobe products, as well as Filemaker, and find that the Pro interface is similar to these products.  It does seem that the ArcGIS Pro needs more work to appeal to power users--but it is still in early versions, and ESRI has been implementing meaningful changes based on user feedback. ... View more