Spatial Analyst Drop Down box disappeared

[BrianDudek]

Already read this thread.  Didn't work.  Running Arcgis10.
http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=995&t=185925&g=1

[JoannaCole]

Hi, I feel your pain.
According to the 'help' files, yes it's just been removed. I have only installed 10 in last couple of days (takes much longer to get new releases in UK) and am just enduring the pain of discovering all that has been removed, changed and moved into less helpful formats. 
  This removal is incredibly annoying and inconvenient and I can see no good reason for it.  The help files claim that you 'simply' need to add the tools back via Customise - which I spent half of yesterday doing, however I can't get the 'spatial analyst... Options...' that was at the bottom of the old drop down, where I used to set standard extent and cellsize for the mxd.  Which was invaluable to create loads of rasters that line up.  If anyone knows how I can get this back PLEASE tell me, it's already causing me serious frustration.

I'm hoping some lovely clever person will create a download that can reinstate the old format.  i.e. a spatial analyst toolbar that actually has some use.  So annoyed about this.  Sort it out please ESRI, I was hoping for some extra functionality with the new release, not less.

[EricRice]

The Options from the pulldown were intentionally removed, along with the limited set of functions available on the toolbar.

The dropdown list of analytic functions in the Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst toolbars were a legacy UI that was causing confusion for users. We considered removing them at 9.0 with the introduction of Geoprocessing tools and all this functionality also being available in the ArcToolbox. We decided to provide a transition period to allow people to move away from this functionality, which most have done.

Questions about different environments, different appearance of dialogs that appear to do the same thing, bugs related to different behavior, and sometimes different terminology and parameters were causing confusion.

We had two options, replace all the functionality on these pulldown menus with the equivalent geoprocessing tools, or remove the functionality and allow users to put what they want on the menus. We chose the latter since we feel most people only used a small subset of tools on the pulldown menu and it is now easy to customize it.

If you have specific functionality missing by the removal of toolbar tools and options, please let us know as soon as possible.  Everything, plus more than what was on the toolbar is available in the Spatial Analyst Geoprocessing Toolbox.

Note, no matter how much you customize the toolbar in 10 with geoprocessing tools, you won't get the Options dialog back.  Since everything is GP, the Environment Settings will be honored, making the former Options dialog moot.  To ensure pixel alignment, set the Snap Raster parameter in the Environment Settings.

Regards,
Eric

[GünterDörffel]

Hi everybody,

while I fully support ESRIs official position on this (who wonders :D) I have fooled around with excactly this scenario to beta-test the customization options of ArcGIS 10 ... besides what Eric states below regarding the mix up of GUIs, Option dialogs etc. there are also a few spots where the single tools of the toolbox are more "modular" then the GUI in Spatial Analyst 9.x was ...

I attached a customized MXD containing a Spatial analyst toolbar "mimicking" the old one ... with a few slight changes ... most of your old "shortcuts" will work, though (a bug) they are not visible in the GUI ...

Have fun AND - hey - things they are changing! Adopt whats advantageous - and the new customization options are a big step forward for non-programmers!

Regards
Guenter

[JasonVanHorn]

The Options from the pulldown were intentionally removed, along with the limited set of functions available on the toolbar.

The dropdown list of analytic functions in the Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst toolbars were a legacy UI that was causing confusion for users. We considered removing them at 9.0 with the introduction of Geoprocessing tools and all this functionality also being available in the ArcToolbox. We decided to provide a transition period to allow people to move away from this functionality, which most have done.

Questions about different environments, different appearance of dialogs that appear to do the same thing, bugs related to different behavior, and sometimes different terminology and parameters were causing confusion.

We had two options, replace all the functionality on these pulldown menus with the equivalent geoprocessing tools, or remove the functionality and allow users to put what they want on the menus. We chose the latter since we feel most people only used a small subset of tools on the pulldown menu and it is now easy to customize it.

If you have specific functionality missing by the removal of toolbar tools and options, please let us know as soon as possible.  Everything, plus more than what was on the toolbar is available in the Spatial Analyst Geoprocessing Toolbox.

Note, no matter how much you customize the toolbar in 10 with geoprocessing tools, you won't get the Options dialog back.  Since everything is GP, the Environment Settings will be honored, making the former Options dialog moot.  To ensure pixel alignment, set the Snap Raster parameter in the Environment Settings.

Regards,
Eric

Eric, I would add that although the decision to build users knowledgebase of customization is commendable, the current toolbar is useless and serves little purpose. In addition, there is an exceedingly large amount of differently organized features with this new version, that it makes the worldwide university training documents and the rewriting of laboratory materials to train students in GIS, even that much more difficult. I am thankful that version 10 was released during summer to properly prepare new lab material before the semester starts.

Best Regards,
Dr. VanHorn

[AndraBobbitt]

Eric.
I don't think that most users need nor want to learn to customize in order to regain functions that were simple to access in the past.  I agree with Dr. VanHorn that the current toolbar is practically useless since you left a contour tool that was marginal to begin with instead of the other contour option to make contours for the entire raster.  The casual user used to be able to make hillshades/slopes/contours quickly without having to go into the toolbox after loading the extension and then finding the tool in another window area.  The old, drop-down availability when the extension was turned on seemed much more logical.  Why not leave it the way it was and then if someone wants to customize their toolbar to remove the drop-downs, let them. Guenter provided a nice mxd showing it can be done and it seems to work although the mxd appears to be locked from further customizing.

Please reconsider.

Thanks..Andra Bobbitt

[mariaRodrigues]

you are lucky Andra Bobbitt ,
I only had one month.
Teresa Rodrigues

[rickysistrunk]

Yeah I was looking at the drop down box and noticed that I couldn't really access it and I couldn't figure out why. I just thought that if you enable the extension it should be able to work. I ended up digging around to find a work around and I couldn't find a way to use the options menu.

I want to go to Spatial Analyst-->Options-->Extent so that I set the grid to include all of the county layer. I can't not figure out how to do this because I can't find the options menu. I just need a little help with this feature

[AidanHolmes]

I agree please bring back the proper spatial analyst toolbar not this neutered thing you�??ve left in its place.  I don�??t know about everyone else but the cut down toolbar to me is all but useless.

I�??m all for change and don�??t mind learning new things but from my point of view the end user. You�??ve taken a perfectly good toolbar that worked and broken it. Sending the end user on a quest to figure out where everything is. I figured it out in a few minutes but it would have been good if it were left in place? If it isn�??t broken why break it?

One more thing that�??s in the wrong place in my opinion is the �??Toolbars�?� Menu. In just about every windows application I�??ve used.. Toolbars is under �??View�?� why move it if it�??s where it�??s expected to be?

[DustinWalters]

Yeah it took me hours to figure out that damn spatial analyst tool bar.  Why have a tool bar without any functionality, it's very misleading and stupid.  I know the tools are available in toolbox but the point of the GUI is simplify the process.  So far there are a lot of things I'm not liking about 10.0.  Glad I got the trial and haven't purchased it yet.