Generating Agriculture Field Plot Maps

[JoshuaKoh]

I work in agriculture remote sensing research, mainly focusing on grains and pulse crops. I have for some time wonder how can I generate a field trial plot map consisting of rectangle polygons (field plots) separated by fixed distances (e.g. 1 m between plots and 5 m between rows etc.) without having to manually draw and adjust the polygons?

Fishnet does not work because the polygons are joined together and although inner buffering can create some distance between the polygons, this will not work well.

I've seen some commercial software such as AgLeader SMS having a module that can define plot parameters (you can input the number of rows per plot, field width and depth, base trip and alley length, and row spacing.) and it will create a shape file of the field map. Plot Prescription Module | SMS™ Advanced | SMS™ Software | Products | Ag Leader Technology 

Any suggestions on plugins or scripts that can do similar job? Or can someone make this plugin? I think there's a huge demand for it.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Fishnet would be the goto, with editing

The size specification to account for an inner buffer, would have been my suggestion

This could be followed up for blocks that differ in row/path spacing, which could be readily accomplished in an edit session, just shifting selected groups of polygons.

Short of that, I suspect that the market isn't that large and the rule set enough a pain to make coding a pure Arc* variant as pretty slim

[JoshuaKoh]

Thank you Dan for your comments. I am already using fishnet and manual adjustments to create the plots. What I am asking for is a more streamlined and automated approach integrated into ArcGIS. For a field trial, depending on size, it can range from 1,000 to 100,000 ++ plots. So manual adjustments would be challenging. There are scripts (R and Python) that achieve similar functions but they are written in older versions that is not compatible with ArcGIS PRO. Perhaps once I achieve proficiency in Python, I can attempt to convert them. As for the market demand, it is huge enough for large multinational companies to produce their own commercial softwares. At least in Australia, agriculture research funding is > 150 million per annum. Most of the remote sensing research group in agriculture rely on different GIS solutions for plot mapping but again, I am hoping one day ArcGIS PRO will implement some tool for field plot generation. Cheers.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

If the python scripts are available, they may work without issue or can easily be modified.  Any links?  It would surely reduce development from scratch time.

[JoshuaKoh]

GitHub - atenah/Plot-Boundary-Extraction-CSV-KML: In this approach, first I create a KML file from t... 

[PauloFlores]

Hello Joshua,

Have you found a solution to draw the plots in ArcGIS? I just want to share with you that it is possible do draw the plots using a python script, and I just figure out a way by which one can accomplish that. That is part of something bigger that I am working on for drone imagery analysis, and I am not ready to share it yet. I am working on write that up. Hopefully we can get that published soon.

Best,

Paulo

[AislinnPearson]

This is a very belated reply but I'd like to know if there is a non-coded solution to this problem? We use MiniGIS to solve this problem, and it's a really great solution not least because the workflow is so simple and it allows us to automatically assign plot ids, but it would be nice to know if it is possible in ArcGIS.