New to v.10 - Creating a New Mosaic Dataset?!?!?!

[TrenahHallgrimson]

I just completed the tutorial for creating a mosaic dataset (http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Exercise_1_Creating_a_mosaic_dataset/0...), and went to re-create it with my own data.  Followed the instructions, but no matter what I do, it only displays one photo in ArcMap.  What exactly am I missing??  Please help!!

[GayathriAlallasundaram]

Hi,

In ArcMap right click the source rasters in the table of contents , select Properties > Source tab > scroll down to check the spatial reference details,  most likely it seems like the source rasters do not have a spatial reference defined.  If this is not defined it is okay but check the extent information,  if the rasters have valid extents then you could define a spatial reference for your mosaic dataset and add the rasters  to them.  If the extents for the source rasters are messed up then you may have to georeference your source rasters before you add them to your mosaic dataset.

Also,  make sure you use the UNC path (\\computername\folder\rastername) to reference your source rasters when adding your rasters to the mosaic dataset and also make sure you have read permissions on the folder that contains the source rasters.  Also define and build overviews after creating your mosaic dataset.

-Gayu

[TrenahHallgrimson]

Sorry for the late reply.  The dataset is georeferenced, and opens in other software properly (ie: KLT Projects).  I also defined it when I was loading the data into the mosaic dataset.  I also built overviews and pyramids, and changed the max number of rasters per mosaic in the mosaic dataset.  And I can STILL only see one photo. Anything else I could be missing??  Thank you so much!

[MarkBrooker]

Nevermind...no one said I was the brightest crayon in the box...  Thanks for your help!

[BjornMagnusson]

Hi
Struggling with mosaic's myself. Not the easiest beast to tame.
Gayu; why do you say to use a UNC path? This would mess with our internal map services data structure requirements. Is there documentation on this or have you tests that show that this works best? Please elaborate.
Björn

[JeffreySwain]

The reason you would use UNC paths is to prevent access errors when the SOC account reaches out to pull in the source data or the overviews.  If you utilize drive letters, then the drive letters must be constant.  So if you are accessing the M drive when you create the mosaic dataset, you will have to be sure if you use that path on the Server you can still see the data.  UNC paths are preferred because they allow the server and creator to see the data the same way.  For distributed setups (data on one server, server is on another and the creator is using a different machine), the UNC path method is preferred.   As long as the machine is access by it's name and the permission is there for it to access the data, there should not be an error created through the use of UNC paths.  Here is some help documentation that discusses why you would use UNC paths. 

Per the help,

Another way to make your data available to all SOC machines is to use the operating system tools to share the directory in which the data is stored. Shared directories are commonly referred to with Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths, which contain the name of the server (for example, \\myServer\data). When you use UNC paths to reference your data, all SOC machines will look to the correct machine for the data.