Latest Contributions by BuckySwider

Hi Cynthia and everyone else!  I suppose I owe everyone an update and an apology.  As with all things volunteer, sometimes a work life or personal life (not to mention a weird spike in the number of fires!) gets in the way of progress.  And that unfortunately has been the case for me recently.   So I've been working with Mary from support on getting the "final" generation step to work without failing.  She has been working diligently to help.  The last thing she's asked for I'm struggling to accomplish on my own.  We are setting up a webex so she can walk me through it after the holidays, because unfortunately right now talking is painful for me (complications from wisdom tooth removal ) and I am using my voice as sparingly as possible (the guys at the firehouse, I believe, are thankful for this while still giving the appearance of empathy  ).   Anyhow, as I did the multi-iteration generation of an entire runbook, I've had the opportunity to take that in a truck and see how it fared in "real life" situations.  Here's the initial takes on things that I need to improve before going live with this: 1- The index is built on the alphanumeric grid ("Pagename") but the notations on each page showing the adjoining map pages use the page number ("Pagenum").  And each individual page has its own "Page Name", but not "Page Number".  So if for example the right (east) side of the map page you're looking at adjoins with page 35, there's no way to find page 35 short of counting each page starting at #1.  It may be somewhat simpler to add the page number on each sheet along with the page name, but I think a much better method would be to stick with one (and only one) reference for each grid- either the alphanumeric grid name or the numeric page number.  Not sure which would be better, but using both is confusing. 2.  The index pages have a bug where long names overlap/overprint onto the corresponding index notation.   3.  The index pages, as currently generated, aren't the easiest to read in a dimly lit fire truck bouncing down the road.  Perhaps going to a single-column format with a larger, bolder font would fix this and #2 at the same time. 4.  Likewise, the basemap I've chosen (black & white basemap) has smaller type and fonts for street names.  So although my grids are fairly small/zoomed in, the street names are hard to read in the hardcopy/truck environment.  I don't know if there really can be any fix for this short of finding a better basemap.   5.  Lastly, some GREAT news:  Our county GIS has a new coordinator and they are in the process of putting together a data portal where the data will be updated every two weeks or so (and for FREE!).  Until the portal is in place, he is going to add me to an ArcGIS group so I can pull the data directly from the web.  AND they have an initiative to get everything into the ESRI Local Government Information Model (LGIM) so in the future I won't have to go through all of the data massaging steps that I do now to get the data into the format where I can use the "Fire Service Maps" routines.  And he's also very enthusiastic about getting what the fire service needs- things like hydrants, road obstructions, etc., may soon all be native to the county datasets so I won't have to go gather up these things from disparate sources.  Things are looking up in that regard! Anyhow, I apologize again for leaving everyone hanging.  Hopefully soon things will return to a semi-normal state and I can resume progress on this project.  Happy holidays to all!   ... View more

Hi again Kory!  I did manage to get the B&W layer into my map- but not quite the way described above.  I saved as a layer file and then imported.  But obviously that is more of a hack then a basemap solution. Where I get stuck in the above steps is "drag and drop the Black and White layer into your newly created basemap.".  I am assuming the source for the drag is the map listed in the "Portal" tab, and I should drag it into the <empty> newly created "basemap" map area?  If so, when I do that it doesn't let me drop the object.  When I roll over the empty map area, the icon changes to the Ø symbol, which of course means "Nuh-uh, don't even try to put that here!!!".  My end goal would hopefully be to have this map on the list of basemaps selectable to every project when I hit the "basemaps" icon. Thanks again!   ... View more

Excellent thanks!!!!  Took me a while (mostly trying to first get it into an arcgis online map!) but once I did that it was easy to get it into my PRO project following your tutorial. Thanks again!   ... View more

Hi Cynthia!  I'll give you a call sometime tomorrow.  And for the record....I'm volunteer firefighter AND volunteer GIS.  I am a career IT person, but this is my first foray into GIS- I got so sick of our outdated map books I decided to do something about it!  It's been a long path though..anyone can stop reading now if they don't want to hear the lengthy story about how I ended up at this point... Almost exactly two years ago I finally decided to do something with new map books.  Ours were originally created in 1980, and updated in 1990.  And since then it's all hand-edits and stuff like that.  Oh, and the township did supply a new "map book" about ten years ago, but the scale is so bad and the objects so small it's virtually worthless.  Everyone still uses the old map books (or google maps!) instead of that new book. So I'm researching, going online, and I find Openmap.  (or is it OpenGIS?  I forget now!).  Installed that and started messing around and got really frustrated.  Upon further searching, I learned that ESRI had this pre-canned "Fire Run Book" thing.  Perfect!  But, alas, ArcMap was cost-prohibitive for my volunteer department.  Then I found they had a non-profit program...great!  Apply for it and...WOMP WOMP WAAA....it's only for 501c(3) organizations and not 501c(4), which we were.  Apparently there has been talk over the years of us applying to be a 501c(3), but the paperwork requirements were too daunting so nobody ever followed through.  Until me!  I had to change the company charter (not an easy process) to match IRS requirements.  Had to change the company bylaws.  So those two steps took about 6 months.  THEN I filled out all the very lengthy, very detailed IRS applications  Another few months.  Finally submit the application... Then a couple months later...VIOLA!  We're approved as a 501c(3)!  I rush back to the ESRI site and submit our non-profit discounted license request...get it approved...install ArcMap...and start trying to figure stuff out.  I go through a bunch of training modules on the Amazonian rainforest.  Start in trying to build the map book.  I wasn't really that far in at all when I realized I was missing some essential data.  I wanted either the building footprints or parcel lines for my map.  The only source I can see that had footprints was G**gle, and they apparently stopped providing their basemap.  I recalled from looking at county real estate records that they have parcel lines...I find out where I can get them from, but unfortunately there's a charge.  So I have to go back to the fire company and get that expense approved...then the request is submitted to the county.  In the meantime some stuff happened in my personal life that started eating up all my free time for a period of about 4 months.  So finally when I break free just last week, I find that the "Fire Run Book" on ArcMap has been succeeded by "Fire Service Maps" on  ArcGIS PRO.  I figure I'd better go with the new thing, so a little learning curve there...and finally, with the help of really cool folks here on geonet, I have a great start on the new map book!  Only took two years from when I started the quest!!!   There's still lots and lots to figure out and tweak, so I figure I'm still a good couple months before the task it complete.  But I'm fairly confident I'll get there- just a lot more of a learning curve to climb!!! (As an aside, even though my fire company got its 501c(3) designation solely for this purpose*, it has paid LOTS AND LOTS of dividends over and above this.  Many residents can now contribute to our fund drive via their employer's matching program; we participate in Amazon Smile and receive funds from that; my employer even offers a quarterly reward to the company once all my volunteer hours are documented.  So it's made us thousands in additional funds already!!)   (* I don't mean that literally- we merit the status- but if I hadn't wanted to get ArcGIS, nobody would've gone through the process to get it done!!)   ... View more

Yay!  Some weird overlapping of ranges here, but I imagine that's something in the source data.  But still much more desirable than what I was seeing previously.  Thanks for correcting my ID-10-T error!! ... View more

My run bombed...comparing my data to the sample data, looks like the sample script doesn't like null values.  Off to python land and figuring out how to change any <null> in these 4 columns to '0' (zero).... ... View more

Aha, so I just manually add those four fields to the "Address Fields" dropdowns...?  Let me give that a shot!!   ... View more

You are correct- that field is just the number, and that is all I have in there.  Check out the LGIM schema- there's a number of different fields/permutations of the address available in SiteAddressPoint: https://solutions.arcgis.com/local-government/help/local-government-information-model/get-started/DataDictionary/DataDic…  Also, upon further review I need to walk back my assertion that you wouldn't be able to print addresses unless you load them into the LGIM schema.  Although my thought would be to populate as many LGIM fields as you can, of course you can put anything at all on the map prior to creating the run book or wall map.  My county supplied the parcel outline polygons in a shapefile- I added that layer after all the stock stuff was loaded up.  And now I'm trying to figure out how to add water hydrants.  I've a feeling that's in an LGIM schema too, but if I can't figure that out I'll just insert my own layer like I did with parcels.   ... View more

Thanks Heather!  I did populate those columns, thinking that it was specifically for the index page...but as you saw above, it didn't work....is your sample from the ArcMap or Pro package?  ... View more

I guess "sufficient" is the relative word there.  It is sufficient for a good number of streets, but any long street that crossed through multiple grids is an issue:   So if we get dispatched to "1234 Butler Pike" it's an exercise in page-flipping frustration trying to find the right page! Our old hand-drawn map books had the index pages something like this: Butler Pike  100-299   A10 Butler Pike   300-399  B9 Butler Pike   400-599  B19 etc.   The street centerline data actually has different street segments with lower and upper address bounds, so there has to be some way to interrogate the data to see what address ranges fall within which grid and create the index appropriately.  I say "some way", but it could be extremely complex.  I'm not sure.  So at this point I'll put it out there for discussions, but at this point I'm anticipating taking the generated index pages and exporting them to a word doc and manually editing in my desired format.  Not ideal, but it is what it is.   (Oh, there's also a little bug there also, where if a street name is too long it just gets overlays the grid...details, details!) ... View more

No, that's a few townships over (Upper Merion).  They are transitioning from an all-volunteer format to daytime paid crews.  Same stations and apparatus, but different station # and apparatus designations during the day.  Wild!   ... View more

Hey, you started answering my follow-up question before I even asked it!  Nice!  Andy yes, I would really love to be able to align my own polygons, because as you point out, the grids automagically chosen are never optimal- breaking up small neighborhoods and major intersections as if it was its mission.   As I am a GIS novice, I guess I will have some learning to do to create my own grid/polygons.... I guess I have some time while I wait for the "Create run book" process to be fixed!!!  ... View more