ArcGIS Earth losing file associations to points/overlays/icons etc

[JamieHolloway]

I'm trying to use ArcGIS Earth to build GIS presentations and perform analytics, but I keep losing file associations of images or icons I reference in the tool when adding points/lines/overlays/icons etc.  

If I view properties of an overlay for example, I see that the file reference will change from the explicit file path/name I used to import an image, to a reference of <href>files/<filename.???</href>, after ArcGIS Earth is restarted.   This is ok because I'm assuming that ArcGIS Earth is persisting a KMZ file in its workspace\data directory, and when it restarts, the tool is referencing the sidecar files directory in the KMZ file it previously saved.

However, sometimes ArcGIS Earth just loses the mapping from the TOC entries to the underpinning icon/image files and I lose work and see red Xs etc...

Can someone assist please.

[GeoffroyRicher-Lalonde]

ArcGIS Earth comes with a PDF user manual in the help folder (example: C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Earth\help). Search for the section Customize layer icons in the PDF. I believe you will find everything you need to know about icon customization there.

[YongweiKang]

Hi @JamieHolloway 

Thanks for your feedback. Please check if the custom image filenames contain non-ASCII characters. We recommend you use ASCII characters in filenames. There may be a bug when encoding filenames in the KMZ file. All My Drawings are saved in the user's workspace\data directory, named my_drawings.kmz. You can unzip the KMZ file, and see if the icon/image files are lost or lose the mapping. If you can't find any issue of the KMZ file, you can share with us, we will investigate it.

Thanks!

[JamieHolloway]

Thank you @YongweiKang.  I don't believe it’s a file naming data encoding issue; it happens randomly with different files. The problem occurred again after an ArcGIS crash. I had to recover from a backup KMZ I saved for 'My Drawings'.

My 'workspace\data\My Drawings.KMZ' file size is 1/2 GB. I have noted that ArcGIS takes a very long time to close (8 minutes+) presumably to persist this KMZ file. I'm running ArcGIS Earth 1.16.0.3547, and it’s a pretty hi-end workstation.

Any recommendations on how I can file large My Drawings folders to avoid this problem. I do use ArcGIS Pro, but prefer ArcGIS Earth for performing demos and for simplicity.

[YongweiKang]

I think ArcGIS Earth taking a long time to close is indeed persisting My Drawings. ArcGIS Earth saves My Drawings very frequently, e.g. creating, deleting, or modifying a drawing element, or closing Earth, all those operations will let Earth save my_drawings.kmz file. However, Earth rarely writes the data in My Data, unless you modify it. So my suggestion is to move the less modified placemarks into the My Data folder. For this purpose, you can save My Drawings as KMZ, and add the KMZ file to Earth, then your drawing placemarks will come into My Data in TOC. You can remove the duplicated drawings in My Drawings, and you can move new placemarks in My Drawings to My Data at any time, don't forget to save them when closing Earth.

Hope it helps.