topic Re: Programatically use ArcMap? in Developers Questions

Programatically use ArcMap?

MatthewClark4 — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 14:39:01 GMT

Apologies if this is such a newbie question, but I'm not even sure where to start. I've been using ArcMap on my Desktop and enjoy it, but I'm wondering if there's a programmatic way of doing the same thing? I'd like to be able to feed what I want to do (example, create a viewshed at a given lat/long with altitude X ft, 10 mile radius, colored with rgb #ff0000 and transparency 50%). I see tons and tons of API sets available via github, but I literally have no idea which one I should be using. Any quick pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

Re: Programatically use ArcMap?

DanEvans — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 14:55:30 GMT

You can write scripts in Python using the ArcPy library to do exactly the sort of thing you mention:

What is ArcPy?—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

There is also Model Builder if you prefer to do things graphically or don't feel confident writing Python code:

What is ModelBuilder?—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

Re: Programatically use ArcMap?

JayantaPoddar — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 15:11:05 GMT

Also Py... Blog by Dan_Patterson‌ is a good resource to work with Python for ArcGIS.

Re: Programatically use ArcMap?

MatthewClark4 — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 17:12:29 GMT

Hi, Dan,

Been a while since I've fiddled with Python, but nothing I can't pick back up. But yet, I want to write some scripts that will take a set of inputs and can programatically generate a map of interest. (It'll be even better if I can then take the result and do statistical analysis on it.) I'll take a look at ArcPy. Thank for the name reference too.

Matt

Re: Programatically use ArcMap?

MatthewClark4 — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 17:13:26 GMT

Thanks, Jayanta. I'm not a Python expert, but I'm a quick learner. I'll ping Dan Patterson once I get past the basics.

Matt

Re: Programatically use ArcMap?

RebeccaStrauch__GISP — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 18:30:40 GMT

When looking at Python, make sure to check out Introduction to arcpy.mapping—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop Which can help with the mapping part. There should be some tech session videos from ast dev summits and UCs that talk about using it.

Recent Proceedings Event presentations and videos
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