Before I came to work at an ESRI workplace, I was an avid QGIS user. Still am, really, but as ArcGIS Pro has developed, I find myself needing to use Q less and less to hack together an as-yet-unimplemented feature in Pro.
(Major props on the eyedropper!)
There is, alas, still one feature that I desperately want: multiple-page layouts.
In the course of my work, there are a number of times when it is helpful to have spatial and non-spatial components on separate pages, and the sheer amount of information in my layout cannot realistically be squeezed into a single page. Or at least, not that the average person could print out. I'm all for digital maps, but I know we have other folks in our county who want it on paper, and I'd like to conveniently oblige them.
The biggest of these items are our Change Records we generate when changes are made to the cadastre.
Here's one for reference.
Combining multi-page layouts with a Map Series would absolutely make my day.
What are my alternatives?
- Make each page a separate layout
- Use some sort of mail merge procedure to generate the non-spatial pages
- Make my layouts potentially tabloid-sized
- Use Python
- Use QGIS
Options 1 and 2 create separate files, which then have to be merged together, adding more steps and intermediate file storage to what is currently a batch process.
Option 3 we tried, but the increased loading time and unprintable nature of the page was not desirable for our users.
Option 4 is a maybe, but there's no way the spatial component will look half as nice as Pro, especially when it comes to labelling.
Option 5 is what I'm currently doing, but it comes with a host of its own limitations, and means that I have to work in two programs during my "weekly update" process, which is sub-optimal.
Final note: I've tried making a reeeeeeally tall layout in Pro and hoping that in the "Print to PDF" process it would cut them, but no. It just generates a really tall PDF.
