topic Re: Custom basemap in ArcGIS Online Questions

Custom basemap

KatarinaHayek — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 06:26:14 GMT

I am currently working within an Organizational Account in ArcGIS Online.

We would like to display our own Administrative Boundaries (contained within shapefile, WGS 84) with an ESRI provided basemap in the background (preferably the "Oceans" basemap, without the reference layer).

Overlaying the boundaries is not a problem in a Web Map, but we need to produce our own Basemap Service for distribution. I would like to publish a Map Service containing the ESRI Oceans basemap with our Boundaries instead of the reference layer, in one. Is this possible?

I have both ArcGIS Online for Organization Account and ArcGIS for Desktop to work with.

Thanks in advance!!

Re: Custom basemap

MikeMinami — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 23:09:34 GMT

What you see in the oceans basemap is part of it and can't be separated out. It's a tiled service, meaning the basemap is a collection of precreated tiled images, like this one.

http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Topo_Map/MapServer/tile/12/1742/1135?blankTile=false

Everything you see is part of the tiled image.

While you could add your data over the tiled data to create a basemap, there is no way to create basemaps with more than one layer from the user interface of ArcGIS Online. You would have to create a web map programmatically, and make a composite basemap layer.

Thanks,

Mike

Re: Custom basemap

KatarinaHayek — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 06:53:48 GMT

Dear Mike,

ESRI provides the Ocean Basemap without the reference layer as a map service in REST:
http://services.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/rest/services/Ocean/World_Ocean_Base/MapServer

What I would like to do is extract only the layer World_Ocean_Base from this cached map service and use it in ArcMap to publish the World_Ocean_Base layer with my Administrative_Boundary layer as my own hosted map service in ArcGIS Online for Org.

Can I extract the World_Ocean_Base layer and open it in ArcMap as a dynamic layer instead of an already cached tile service?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Katarina

Re: Custom basemap

MikeMinami — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:09:57 GMT

You are correct. For some reason, I was looking at the TOPO basemap...

No, you can't add the oceans basemap to arcmap then add your data over it and publish it out. Basemap layers can't be published as part of services. The only way to do this would be to write code using the API. Web maps do support multi-layer basemaps, as described here:

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/arcgis-rest-api/#/baseMap/02r30000003w000000/

I'm no programmer, but you could author a web map that used the oceans basemap, then programmatically modify the basemap section to include a reference to your service.

Thanks,

Mike