Arc GIS 10 and Map Book DS

[DarenTatham]

The company I work for is possibly upgrading the version of ArcGIS from 9.3 to 10.  I have a few tools that I use on a daily basis for my map generation.  One of which is MapBook DS, which I use to create map books.  If I upgrade this systems' ArcGIS will the mapbook grids be compatible with the built-in mapabook generation tool?  Would that tool also create the mapbook pages in a similar graphical format?  I am really accustomed to using this tool to create our mapbooks and would like to continue using it if possible.

Thanks for the help

Daren Tatham

GIS Analyst
Environmental Resource Solutions Inc.

[JohnSobetzer]

If you insert some dynamic text like the data driven page name then double click on the box you get something like this: <dyn type="page" property="name"/>.  Replace name with the field name you want.  This only works if you have set the project up for Data Driven Pages.  Just opening up an pre-existing mapbook project won't work but it is easy to do since your project is set and you have your index file.  Just make the DDP toolbar available and click the setup button and go.

[StineSkinnes]

Hi.
Is it possible to have a dynamic table in the layout using DDP, or does that require MPS Atlas?

[MonjaEsterhuizen]

Hi Carl, did you get an answer to your question? I have a similar issue with a road corridor, for which I want to create a series at an optimal rotation to fit the layout page for each map.
Please reply to: monjae@uwp.co.za
Thank you.
Monja.

Does anyone know how to override the automatic rotation in a strip map???

Accordin to ESRI Help, "In order to keep within cartographic conventions, these angles are calculated to keep North oriented toward the top of the page as much as possible. Angles are calculated against the default orientation of a map where 0 degrees is due North, 90 degrees is due East, 180 degrees is due South and -90 degrees is due West. " While I completely understand why this is done, I find it to be a complete P.I.T.A. when dealing with a winding corridor.

I've been changing the field value in the attribute table to correct this but when creating a map book for 20 miles of raod at 1:1200, it becomes very tedious.

Thanks!
Carl

[ElliottLowe]

John - have you found any work-around for issues 1 & 3? To me, they are core issues. In fact, I may not upgrade to 10 if it means having to re-create all my 9.3.1 mxds that contain DSMapbook sets. The tools in 10 may be great for NEW work, but ...........

Regards

I think I may have found a workaround for issue # 1. It took some setting up but you can do it pretty easily with no coding involved. This will basically give you a list of the page names in an attribute table with a page number for look up purposes.

First I added a field to my layer that contains all of the page names/index. I called it page number. Sorted the page names alphabetically and then calculated the Page Number field starting with 1. We have over 7000 pages in our mapbook and remembering the name is quite a pain.
Open your project that you have your mapbook set up in. Follow the steps to set up your DDP. Click the down arrow on the DDP toolbar and choose Show Page.
Open the attribute table of the layer containing Page Number and Page Name. Hide all fields besides those two. Pin the attribute table to the right side of the screen by the toolbox and catalog menus and resize it to whatever you want it to look like. You should now have at least a look up table that give you a page number for each map. Type that number into the DDP toolbar and press enter.
Once you have it set up how you want it, open the Customize menu �?�Customize Mode �?� Options and check the box to save all customizations to the document. This will allow you to move around the attribute table in any other mxd but retain the setting in this map book. You can even password protect the customizations so your users can�??t move things around and save the project. We have over 15 users getting into this project daily and this should solve our issue of not having the map series tab anymore. Hope this helps a little.

[JohnSobetzer]

That looks like a good workaround for your situation, Elliot, about as good as you could get.  If I had to use 10 I'd probably try it.  But like the workarounds I've tried with the DDP such as using a table to pan around to different pages, it can't fix all the problems even skipping the initial setup work.  You certainly wouldn't want to open up any other tables in that project because in 10 (unlike 9x) they would all open up in that narrow window.  It also requires dropping the mouse and typing in a number for a single page, or more for multiple pages, and if the latter it doesn't persist.  Now if in SP1 they allowed tables to appear in their own window, and in the DDP allowed the use of an index table set up like yours with just clicking in it to move the map to different pages or export one or more, then I'd like that.

[ElliottLowe]

One thing that I did notice is that if you double click on the row header it will zoom to the image. The one problem with that is the scale changes. We need all of our maps printed in a 1:1200 scale at all times so that measurements are correct. If you double click on the row header it will change that for some reason, but it will pan to that map page. If you are using dynamic linked text it will not update either. Why couldn't they have just made it like the old DS Map Book app? There is claimed solution out there that I found when I was at the User conference last year. MapLogic Layout Manager, but only part of it is free and gets expensive if you need a Pro Level Enterprise license. www.maplogic.com if you want to take a look.

[JohnSobetzer]

See #NIM059032.  I don't know if anything will be done regarding it.

[KevinMacLeod1]

That looks like a good workaround for your situation, Elliot, about as good as you could get.  If I had to use 10 I'd probably try it.  But like the workarounds I've tried with the DDP such as using a table to pan around to different pages, it can't fix all the problems even skipping the initial setup work.  You certainly wouldn't want to open up any other tables in that project because in 10 (unlike 9x) they would all open up in that narrow window.  It also requires dropping the mouse and typing in a number for a single page, or more for multiple pages, and if the latter it doesn't persist.  Now if in SP1 they allowed tables to appear in their own window, and in the DDP allowed the use of an index table set up like yours with just clicking in it to move the map to different pages or export one or more, then I'd like that.

Removing the ability to have tables in separate windows, and the removal of MapBook (DDP as people point out is not better, it's different, and missing some features)...has resulted in a lot of people not buying Arc 10. If ESRI fixes these two things, that alone will spur adoption at many agencies.

ESRI:

1) Allow multiple table windows
2) bring back MapBook functionality (having a list of MXDs in a pane like MapBook. Data Driven Pages is NOT a replacement!)

[RhiawnaBracci]

I noticed that people are doing a lot of work arounds but I found this tutorial about DDP and one of the images about pdf's shows the edges are hatched out (lighter in color) giving me hope that it is possible within the application itself:

http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/arcgisdesktop/archive/2010/01/22/Data-Driven-Pages.aspx

Has anyone figured out where this lovely feature might be?

[KhaledHussein]

Here is what I did
Run the Categories.exe exectutable in you ArcGIS bin directory.
Scroll down to ESRI Mx Extensions and select that category.
Click on the Add Object ... button and browse for DSMapBookUIPrj.dll, When the Add Object dialog comes up, uncheck everything and then click on just DSMapBookExt and click OK.
While still in the Component Category Manager, scroll up to ESRI Contents Views and select that category.
Click on the Add Object ... button and again browse for DSMapBookUIPrj.dll Uncheck all the classes, then click on just DSMapBookTab and click OK

This will add a button to the TOC, however the button will not show an icon but it will work, good luck

Khaled