How to download the feature layer from a web layer "shared" to AGOL?

[ScottEdmondson]

If anyone has a better way to do this, please advise. Thank you in advance.

Because a third party helped us out and created an all-city feature layer from our 3D multi-patch Building data in about 20 sections that cover our city, and we did not have the original feature layer, I needed to download the feature layer from an AGOL Feature Layer and Scene Service of 3D Buildings used in ArcGIS Urban. Hence, my trip down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what i presumed would be a relatively common and straight forward task. It took me about 5 hours of asking, exploring, testing, to figure it out. 

 However, this same method would work on any web layer, assuming one has access rights to the data. We wanted the data locally for full control and for updating it from/as projects complete construction. 

From google searches I found lots of related questions/responses, some irrelevant, some partial descriptions, but no complete description until i pieced together. 

Here's a summary of the successful workflow:

1. Go to the AGOL page of the feature layer one uploaded to AGOL ("shared" from Pro as a web layer).
2. EXPORT as FGDB (note: took 30 seconds for about 1GB)
3. Go to ROOT of one’s AGOL Content, sort by most recent
4. Click the “. . . “ to the right on the file line, just before the “modified” field.
5. Choose download: choose what you want to do:  open, save as, save
6. Go to local saved location and extract the zip
7. Change the name of the long-number-named GDB
8. Open a PRO project
9. Go to Catalog, add a new database = to the GDB one just downloaded, unzipped, and saved, with new changed GDB name (or not)
10. Add it to the map/scene, check it out. For me, it should be whole city, and it is.
11. NOW we have our local version of the Final all city 3D Building Layer we use on AGOL

[DavidPike]

In ArcGIS Pro you can use 'Feature Class to Feature Class' and I guess the now recommended 'Export Features' tool.  You can also use the Python API to automate those manual steps you've described - Export and Download calls in AGOL.  I can share an example script if that would be useful.

Is this a process you're looking to do regularly?  If not - the steps you've described are common.

[ScottEdmondson]

Hi David, THNX for the reply. Very helpful. I'll check out those Pro tools. If you have an example script you can share, that would be appreciated.  At the moment, I don't think I'll be doing this workflow regularly. It was the odd case where a third party did the work and still had the original feature layer locally, from which the published to AGOL.  Normally, we'll be publishing to AGOL, and we wanted to have the feature layer locally, so we could update the 3D Multi-Patch features as new projects are built and then republish periodically to AGOL to update that layer. 

However, I searched and searched Esri and Google for the method I summarized, and only found bits and pieces over about 5 hours before I was able to put the puzzle together. It might be nice if an Esri Pro wrote up a blog article summarizing that would be found a lot more quickly! 🙂

BTW, just checked out the Pro tools. The "Feature Class to Feature Class" tool is being deprecated, and the 'Export Features' tool is described as "Converts a feature class or feature layer to a feature class, which sound a bit tautological. If it's already a feature class, why/when would one want to convert it to a "feature class," which it is already? I must be misunderstanding something.

Also, the workflow I describe below is the opposite direction: going from an AGOL multi-patch building feature service of a 3D building scene layer, and getting the 3D Multi-Patch feature layer back out from it (because one does not have it locally because a 3rd party developed it and did not provide it after publishing the scene to AGOL) to use in Pro as the local layer to update and republish to AGOL when updated from then on. 

Thanks again, and any additional clarifications would be appreciated. 

Scott

Please NOTE:  Although the discussion above is all about AGOL to PRO so one can update one's 3D multipatch building layer and republish to AGOL, and then anyone can use the updated AGOL (or their current uses would be automatically updated because the update would use a "replace"), our main use of this layer is as the 3D Building layer to which we connect our ArcGIS Urban app, as our way of maintaining and updating this layer.