Recommended specs for new GIS workstation

[MichaelWoodward]

Currently have a 5-year old Dell Optiplex 920 with the following specs

Intel® Core™ i7-4770

16GB (4x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 RAM

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Samsung 850 EVO 512 GB SSD Boot Drive

1TB 7200 rpm Storage Drive

It's my turn to get a new machine this year and I'm not sure If I need to build a higher-end gaming desktop, or get an actual workstation.  I maintain our City's water, sewer, drainage, and zoning maps.  Right now the machine is quite slow using ArcGIS Desktop 10.6.  When working in ArcMap, I get lots of freezing up and "Not Responding" messages.  I to have several different years on aerial images in my map, as well as layers for water, sewer, drainage,m zoning etc.  The aerial images are not stored on a local machine, they are accessed through the NC OneMap server.  I'm not 100% sure if the slow downs are caused by our network, or my hardware.

What would you recommend as specs for a new machine?  I may be forced to go with a Dell machine by our "IT" department, but I may be able to talk my way out of it if there is something better.

[EricCollinsOVV]

Similar to the comments already provided, sometimes an MXD becomes corrupted. WHen encountering issues, sometimes I'll open a blank MXD and copy the layers of interest to it so that I only have what I need to do a process. Also, ensure that things like all your layers are all using the same map projection; if you're not, transformaitons on the fly are occurring and can significantly impact your work. Try running analyze map to see if there are any efficiencies that can be gained through indexing data, etc. 

[MichaelWoodward]

The GIS training people did mention it's good to do a "save as" of the MXD instead of a regular save every once in a while if I started to have problems. 

I did run the "analyze map" tool, I got 91 warnings.  They are either for "Layer's data source has a different projection" or "Layer's data source doesn't have a spatial index"

The ones that have a different projection, the data frame has this projection: "NAD_1983_StatePlane_North_Carolina_FIPS_3200_Feet" and the layer's data has this: "NAD_1983_2011_StatePlane_North_Carolina_FIPS_3200_Ft_US"

Are those the type of things that can cause problems?

[EricCollinsOVV]

Having more than one projection in a layer will slow down the rendering as Arc needs to transform everything to the layer's projection. If everything is the same projection, then Arc renders much faster.

Not having a spatial index on a feature class with lots of elements will also impact the draw rate. Not a big deal for a few hundred elements, but if you are drawing thousands or millions of elements, you're going to be gnashing your teeth waiting for it to draw.

[MichaelWoodward]

Is there an easy way to change the projection of a feature class?  It didn't look like I could change it anywhere in the layer properties, or in ArcCatalog.

The ones that don't have a spatial reference at all are CAD files that I have added to the drawing.  Some were created in-house using our AutoCad LT software, some where created by outside engineering firms.

[EricCollinsOVV]

The question you need to ask yourself is:

Is NAD83 SPCS NC FIPS 3200_Feet different than NAD83_2011 SPCS NC FIPS 3200_Ft_US?

2 parts.

The _2011 suggests a different epoch of NAD83 than NAD83 Original (the subtleties of which I won't get into). 

Which unit of measure is correct? Is the first one actually US feet or international feet?

Assuming, for the moment, that these are actually identical (which they may not be!) One can "fix" the projection in ArcCatalog. One can also add a spatial reference to a CAD file if Arc shows "none" the same way in ArcCatalog.

[MichaelWoodward]

I compared the properties for the two projections in ArcCatalog, and the only thing different is the "False_Easting" value.  One is 2000000.002616666, and the other is 2000000.0

They both say "Foot_US" under "Linear Unit"

[EricCollinsOVV]

Doing a quick search, a user in another thread stated "I was advised by the State of NC that the differences in this data are very slight for our area, to the point that it wouldn't be noticed in the GIS software."

Now, "very slight" was not quantified.

NAD_1983_2011_StatePlane_North_Carolina_FIPS_3200_Ft_US (WKID 6543) has a Datum of D_NAD83_2011

NAD_1983_StatePlane_North_Carolina_FIPS_3200_Feet (WKID 2264) has a Datum of D_North_American_1983

If your application requires an accuracy of better than 3 feet, I would recommend transforming using PROJECT those fewer datasets referenced from one system to the other. If not, you can "lie" to the system.

If in doubt, do some test transformations to see how much coordinates will shift between the two. Or, assuming Arc is set up properly to transform between the two, leave it alone. I don't know how much of a benefit you would gain from eliminating transformations on the fly; that's something you would have to determine for yourself.

I know from the use our equivalent of the PLSS grid that I always want my PLSS grid and MXD projections to match for it can add minutes to the redraw at small scales.

[NathanBruce1]

Michael

Michael, 

I was just browsing your post, its been a while so things may have improved already.  One option to speed up your imagery could be to post it to ArcGIS Online and call on it from there to use locally.  We ended up doing this for some of our power users to avoid network issues.  Just a suggestion.  Nathan