Latest Contributions by MarkAndersen1

I have a personal geodatabase with a point feature class and a related table.  There is a one-to-many relationship between points and records in the related table (i.e., for each point feature collected, there are multiple features recorded in the table).  For the most part, this is working fine, but twice now, when one of our techs finished entering records in the related table, and hit the OK button to finish, ArcPad has frozen.  Even after sitting for 30 minutes, it did not become responsive again.  I can kill ArcPad using the task manager, but then we lose the data from that particular point feature (in that case, a 10 minute point count for birds).  Because of sampling protocol and other issues, it's not as simple as just re-doing the point and recollecting all of the data. Has anyone experienced something similar, or found a solution to the problem of ArcPad freezing?  I'm using a Trimble Juno 3B w/ ArcPad 10.0 R2 (Build30).  I have a few additional base data layers added (just some simplified, major roads, and a shapefile with maybe 1000 points for navigation). ... View more

Yesterday I added 30 polygon features to a shapefile by copying and pasting polygons from another layer.  The features are potential sampling frames that were painstakingly selected by hand after evaluating each potential frame for access issues, etc. (a process that took 5-6 hours.  I am dead sure I created 30 features yesterday, saved edits obsessively as I was going along, and saved and exited the map document when I was done at the end of the day.  When I had finished yesterday, there were 30 polygons in the shapefile. Today, when I opened the map document, there were only 19 polygons in the layer.  When I open the dbf file, I find there are only features in that table, as well. I tried updating the spatial index, etc., but still do not see my missing feature.  I'm now looking at an additional 3-4 hours of work to add the missing 11 polygons back in, unless someone has some idea what's going on, and can tell me how to resurrect the polygons? ... View more

I have what I hope is a pretty simple question...  I'm putting together an ArcPad map for some data collecting this spring.  When I load the project into ArcPad, everything looks and works fine, with one exception.  The default edit form for entering attributes (to a point shapefile and a related table) is fine, except that one of my attribute columns in the related table is a text field that uses a domain that contains hundreds of 4-letter code.  It's a pain to scroll through these, and it would be much simpler if this were a combo box, so that a user could type the first letter or two, and find the correct entry more quickly.   Is there a way to access the default form in ArcPad Studio, and just change the list box to a combo box?  Or will I have to create a new data entry form?  Also, where is a good place to start reading about customizing forms, etc?  The help files I've looked at so far don't seem particularly helpful on specific questions. Thanks! ... View more

0 down vote favorite I am trying to determine the level of spatial autocorrelation in a point dataset. The attribute I'm interested in is binary (presence/absence of a species), for which Moran's I is not appropriate. On the other hand, Joint Count statistics, which are typically recommended for binary or categorical data, apparently are not appropriate for point data. In short, the question is thus: what is an appropriate statistic to measure global and/or local spatial autocorrelation of points when the attribute of interest is binary? ... View more

I'm still waiting for a decent explanation of why VBA is being discontinued, in the first place.  The first reason given, if I remember correctly, was that Microsoft was getting rid of VBA.  Microsoft has said, very clearly, that they have no plans to discontinue VBA in the Office suite, and that existing partners can continue to ship VBA.  Directly from an MS Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsto/archive/2008/01/16/the-reports-of-vba-s-demise-have-been-greatly-exaggerated.aspx): "Any existing partner can continue to ship VBA and Microsoft Office will continue to include it." I have tried writing code in VB.net and Python, and it just isn't as good.  It is so much more difficult to debug code when using .net to develop extensions or scripts in ArcMap, and Python doesn't offer the same abilities, with no access to ArcObjects.  I have a solid programming background, so this is not simply a matter of someone complaining about problems caused by them not understanding what they're doing.  Seems like a case of "change for the sake of change."  Why take away something that is working so well for so many users? At a minimum, I would like an honest and reasonable explanation about why VBA is going away in ArcGIS. ... View more

I am trying to find the quickest way (in terms of processing speed) to find the total (sum) of all values in a raster.  In other words, I am looking for a tool that will add the value for all cells within a particular raster, and just give me that value as a number.  Ideally, this would spit out a table with just one row, as the "Get Raster Properties" tool does.  The "Get Raster Properties" tool in the "Raster Properties" toolbox in ArcToolbox looks like it is very close, in that it provides summary statistics for a raster, but there are two problems: 1) there is not an option for "sum"; and 2) it appears to round-off the answer to 6 decimal places, and I need much greater precision than that. The only way I've found to do this is to use the "Zonal Statistics As Table" tool and set a dummy "zone" raster that has a single value ("1") for all pixels covering my study area, so that it is finding the statistics (including sum) for all cells in the raster.  However, this is pretty slow--mostly because I think it's comparing each pixel to see which zone it's in.  It seems that there should be a built-in way to get a sum of all cell values in a raster.  Help! ... View more