topic Re: My question is pretty simple - Why? in ArcGIS Pro Questions

My question is pretty simple - Why?

PaulJordan — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 12:15:24 GMT

Why ArcGIS Pro? I can't find anything to like about this application. The flat GUI makes everything look like background. The app crashes with alarming regularity. The interface is worlds away from that of ArcGIS. Why? And as with previous major releases it almost seems that the development team had no contact with the developers of ArcGIS desktop. One might think that the radical changes are a deliberate attempt to force users into ESRI training programs for a hefty fee.

Bottom line - not at all happy with Pro.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 14:55:21 GMT

It has happened before .... ArcView 3.x to ArcMap 8.x esri forums... geonet

People adapt or they don't based on their experience.

hmmm I have never had a crash, love the 3D, find the ability to use way more memory and significant upgrades to python and its associates a significant move forward.

Hope this is a temporary setback, your GIS alternatives are limited... everyone hates Windows but...everyone has to adapt at some stage

Good luck

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

RebeccaStrauch__GISP — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 08:22:27 GMT

Main reason I think they came up with pro is they had to start from the ground up to make it fully 64-bit compatible, which many users were calling for. The other complain about Desktop was not allowing multiple layouts in on doc/project....Pro allows that although still a bit clunky to learn, but I think once you get the hang of it, its good. That, and (in my opinion) they were wanting to change the licensing (thru Online only, which they have backed down and allowing LM/concurrent licensing due to user demand) and trying to make a more "modern" (office-type) interface with the ribbons.

Personally, I don't like the ribbon look, but slowing getting used to it. One complaint I have about the ribbons is python-addins can not be used as toolbars at this time since there is no simple way to add them (hoping this will change at some point, vote up... https://community.esri.com/ideas/12257 )

I haven't gone to Pro yet either, and really have no need for the cool 3D aspect of it, but there are some that do need it and have done some very nice things with it. As Dan mentioned, things will evolve, but from all talk so far from esri, ArcGIS Desktop is not going away anytime soon. Still too many things missing from Pro (although the list of ported items is growing).

So, even though Pro is the big push, I wouldn't feel pressure to change if you don't want to.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

AlexanderGray — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:09:50 GMT

I think you would need to ask someone that has basic gis knowledge but no experience with either ArcMap nor Pro to compare the two fairly. ArcMap is familiar, I know where the tools I need are, I understand the concepts well enough to find the tools that I don't know where they are.. Pro is the new thing... The asynch is interesting but I find pro (at least 1.2) quite slow. I have a decent laptop, not top range but not bottom either. I don't do 3D stuff. The hiding of the edit session to make it look always on is kind neat but when you have a lot of layers loaded in different maps, clicking on the edit tab to edit a small feature in one layer can take 10 minutes to complete asynch because it is opening a session on everything. 64 bit is long long overdue and so is Python 3. I am surprised it is a windows only product, my understanding was the new graphic engine would work on other platforms... Ribbons are ok, sure beats the 30+ toolbars in ArcMap... Turn them all on and fill the screen. Some key pieces missing, like annotation on the map not just the layout. The ability to create graphic elements in python. Also integration with ArcGIS server. I would like to run pro specific scripts (with arcpy.mp) through ArcGIS Server published toolboxes to publish pdfs with a server license on a linux platform...

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

HectorBorro1 — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:36:27 GMT

As a newcomer to the GIS arena, I tried and tested ArcGIS desktop 10 , ArcGIS pro 1.2 and Mapinfo. I found ArcGIS Pro to be the most intuitive and familiar to work with.

It feels more modern, aesthetic and the ribbon simply follows the logic of producing maps and geoanalysis.

I understand that being used to a certain software and workflow, one could be biased not to move to the next version. As I'm sticking to MS Office 2007....

Dan and Darwin mentioned, one needs to adapt. I think it was natural for ArcGIS to evolve in this direction. (and I need to evolve and switch to Office 2016)

good luck with the switch if you decide to make it!

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

HectorBorro1 — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:48:03 GMT

I forgot to mention that the introduction of ArcGIS PRO caused great confusion for me as both ArcGIS "traditional" and PRO coexist....

Which one is better? Why 2 versions of the same thing? Certification only exists for v10.3 now... will there be for Pro 1.3?

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 17:56:48 GMT

Pro 1.3 is already out... check with your administrator if you don't manage it yourself.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

HectorBorro1 — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 21:55:16 GMT

ah yes, thanks. I was referring to the training and certification How to Prepare for an Exam

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

Anonymous User — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 22:35:57 GMT

Great question Hector! ArcGIS Pro is already included in some aspects of the current ArcGIS Desktop certification exams. Content related to Pro will be included wherever it clearly maps to the skills measured by an exam. As Pro functionality continues to expand we will look to incorporate it more fully into certification program offerings. As a note, we are currently working on the release of a new Training website where candidates will be able to more clearly see which software versions candidates should be familiar with for each exam. If you still have questions you can reach out anytime to certification@esri.com and we will be glad to assist.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

SubodhDhakal1 — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 22:49:01 GMT

Whether you like it or not, moving forward I believe ESRI will retire ArcMap (very soon, say 5 years time) and there will be only ArcPro. I can understand the feeling when you are so use to with ArcMap and all of sudden when you struggle to find the same tool that you have used for years in ArcMap into pro, it is very obvious that you would hate Pro. ArcPro from beta through to 1.3 now has improved a lot and Esri is giving their best to improve (I believe so, for their own benefit). Needless to say, Esri's product chokes at times but I have more good things to share than bad

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

TimMinter — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 16:42:16 GMT

Because employers select employees who can use available and modern tools. ArcGIS Desktop 32-bit tools are not modern, and soon enough will not be available.

If your only trick is to learn new tricks, then when you're an olde dawg...

Cheers and hang in there.

tim

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

ToriWilbon — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 18:19:11 GMT

I just do not understand the animation on ArcGIS Pro. It does not look right and I have no idea how to add the legend or title to my video. ArcMap just seems more easier to do.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

JosephSegretto__GISP — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 19:28:05 GMT

ArcGIS Pro is the future. It is designed to work with GIS services and is being positioned as the premier tool for GIS analysts to work with GIS Data, especially from the web. ArcMap was not designed to work in such an environment. It is not cost efficient for software companies to reverse engineer their old products to work with new technology, and it does not make any sense for them to continue intense development for both products. I believe you will see more and more functionality added to ArcGIS Pro that is not added to ArcMap. We are seeing it already with vector tiles. While you may not be ready to make the jump now, eventually there will be a reason for people to make the change.

Another motive for ESRI is to change their revenue stream. The new licensing model is based on named users on subscription, while the old model was based on a shared bank of concurrent use licenses with annual maintenance fees. Concurrent use licenses are often shared by large numbers of people. Imagine if the 20 shared licenses could be turned into 80 named users. Then those 80 users will also need access to premium apps that are also assigned to named users and not shared. By enticing existing customers into the new applications, they buy into a new licensing model which will help generate more revenue without forcing the software company to generate new sales. ESRI is certainly not the only software company doing this. It is a trend in the industry.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

BrianQuinn — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 19:50:59 GMT

I shared this question for a couple of years. But no longer. I'm nine days into a cold-turkey quit of ArcMap. Big user requests that have been put off for years by Esri are showing up implemented and stable in Pro 1.3 like: Design view for attributes. Rename and reorder your fields, yes; and not just aliases! Tweak one or twenty items, then Save those changes to a revised schema. People have wanted that for more than a decade, and now it's here.

Consistent, more purely Pythonic approach to geoprocessing. I was a bit put off at first by having to go to the little red lunchboxes so much to do my stuff, until I realized that that Geoprocessing pane was accumulating my last 20 functions and suddenly I stopped hunting. Everything is Python, so instead of calc'ing in some <NULL>, its now called 'None' and the single quotes are not needed. That works for me.

Lots of editing for me this past week on building footprints; quickly I find a workflow like select in attribute table, Zoom to Selected is right there, Merge stays open and docked, then on to the next one. This is nice! Split polygons with or without a selection? I'll take three of those!

Want to get started in 3D? Finding the Procedural renderers without need for a CityEngine license really makes my day. And when that fancy rendering is taking place, my workstation is firing on all 8 threads and yet the interface stays pretty responsive. That ain't never gonna happen in a 32-bit app that derives from MFC tools released in the Windows 95 era.

For myself, after less than 10 days, I'm only going back for very specific things: ArcGIS 10.4.1 for Desktop gives me more stable ability to join 16 attributes from three different tables to 150,000+ polygons, so I use it for that and get right back to Pro. Creating a new Feature Dataset that is defined for both local horizontal grid and also for standard Z datum? That is doable in 10.4.1 and I can't figure out how to specify Z in Pro 1.3 right now. But in 10 days, that's two *very* narrow actions that were better in Desktop.

By way of disclosure, I learned Arc/INFO at 4.01, found reasons to use ArcView GIS from 1.0 to 3.2a, and saw Jack Dangermond outshine Steve Jobs at the plenary where 8.0 was announced. So 16 years with a 32-bit app really does seem long enough to file for separation without too many regrets! Maybe keep trying?

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

Anonymous User — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 20:56:54 GMT

Hi Tori,

Yes, adding a title and/or legend (image) to your movie is pretty important. The development team here at ESRI is currently implementing the functionality to add titles (text elements) and images. These added tools will be in the next release (1.4).

Thanks, Steve

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

KirstenPinkston — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 00:56:46 GMT

Hi Paul. Thank you for sharing your experience. Customer feedback is the primary driver of ArcGIS Pro software development for the Desktop team. If you’re interested in speaking about your thoughts and sharing your crash dumps with me, I’d be happy to setup a call to help investigate.

As other folks on the thread have explained, ArcGIS Pro was designed to address long-standing customer feedback regarding the need for a 64-bit Desktop application, multiple layouts in a single project, and 2D/ 3D integration, among many other requests. The interface design is different from that of ArcMap, with the intent to make your maps and layouts the focus of the project. There will be an additional option to change the theme of the interface in a coming release of the software that might address your feedback, so definitely keep an eye out and let us know what you think.

I’ve found that the most effective way to get started with Pro, is to import your existing MXDs and attempt your workflows with the use of the contextual, ribbon-based interface. Many customers have expressed that the experience is different from ArcMap, but after spending some time in the ArcGIS Pro application with their own maps and data, the benefits (many as mentioned throughout this thread) and ease-of-use becomes more and more obvious. There are also some great online resources available that can help you to become familiarized with the interface and to migrate your existing GIS work.

Some suggested Help Topics:

Free online Web Course:

Getting Started with ArcGIS Pro

Learn ArcGIS Tutorial:

Get Started with ArcGIS Pro

Please continue to provide your feedback here and in the ArcGIS Ideas space. If you have any questions please feel free to personal message me. Thanks!

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

LeightonWedderburn — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:11:33 GMT

Dan,

Can you describe what type of system you are running(specs, ram, cpu, etc) and do you or anyone else have any idea why some including myself have issues running ArcGIS Pro on Workstations that have more than the minimum requirements.

From my experience I have been able to work with Pro with minimal issues at times and crashing constantly at other time (More so with versions prior to Pro 1.2) . I believe this has something to do with memory (resource allocation, not certain) so I try to work in Pro with as much free/available memory(and other dedicate resources) as possible.

I have just installed Pro 1.3 so I have not been able to give it a good test drive yet.

It will soon be time for a new workstation and wanted to get a better idea of what to get moving forward. In my organization I am the test pilot and help other transition to the latest and greatest (in this case Pro). I know ESRI has posted recommendation for hardware,I have reviewed it well.

But I also want to know, are their specific peripheral hardware brands/speed/size/etc more desirable for Pro to run without crashing and perform optimally? Is there some documented/undocumented tuning possible, to give priorities to Pro?

Why do you suppose you have less issues than others? Are you running a dedicated machine tuned for Pro? Any additional insights are appreciated.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

Anonymous User — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 17:47:04 GMT

I don't know why people are complaining about it's replacement. It's a work in progress and Arcmap is showing it's age. They had to do it for multi-threading and 64 bit. There are free programs out there that have all these things so it would be a bad business decision to not design something newer. The ribbon can go though. I still don't understand how that menu system is supposed to increase productivity. I've used it on AutoCAD and Office products for 5 years and it takes up too much screen real estate.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

DanPatterson_Retired — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 18:56:46 GMT

I am not near that machine now, but it is your typical 'gaming' machine with a high-end, video card, 32 Gig of ram, high end cpu... running windows 10. I get my machines pieced together from components at a computer shop that does this type of thing. It is nothing special in most regards.

I often wonder why people have all these crashes myself. I think it must have something to do with what people are working with and how their data is sourced. For example, SDE... the mere mention of network served/sourced data seems to increase the reporting of problems by many magnitudes. People on geonet often fail to mention this when trying to narrow down issues. I only used local data in my work and usually data I create myself. I don't do the fancy gdb stuff, for which it was designed. The only crash I had was when I was trying to edit a toolbox that I brought in from 10.4. My solution, I created a new one from scratch instead of patching up an existing import. I do everything fresh in PRO or I do something in parallel in *map and pro.

I doubt, it is a memory issue, I can't see it being machine specs, I really think it is trying to recycle old stuff into PRO and non-local data sources. It would be hard for anyone I suspect to replicate my environment given their work requirements.

Re: My question is pretty simple - Why?

Robert_LeClair — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 15:08:59 GMT

Paul -

I do want to address some workflows to troubleshoot your ArcGIS Pro crashes:

First, determine if your hardware is "Pro ready" - the ArcGIS Pro 1.3 system requirements may be found here: ArcGIS Pro 1.3 system requirements—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS for Desktop
An online tool "Can your computer run ArcGIS Pro?" may be found here: Can You Run It?
Determine your make/model of your video card and update the video card driver directly from the manufacturer's website. Windows Update will not provide the latest/greatest drivers.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Robert LeClair

Esri-Denver