Automating a Find and Zoom Process

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07-01-2014 07:20 AM
ib
by
New Contributor II
Hi all,
I am a total newbie to programming anything into Arc with little to no programming experience but I'm finding the need to be able to automate certain processes so now's as good of time as any to start learning.  The problem is, I need to get this process going ASAP, of course...

What I'm trying to do seems fairly simple:

I have a bunch of points with unique ID's and I need to be able to export the area around these points from my base map to JPG's at multiple zoom levels.

My process might look like this:
1. Enter the unique ID into a field
2. The program/script would zoom to the point with this ID and export a JPG at two or three different scales.

Can I do this in model builder or will I need to write a Python script? 
Thanks!
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21 Replies
IanMurray
Frequent Contributor

It would be possible to use a csv file as an input parameter with a few changes.  Python has a csv reader/parser module that could convert a csv to a list which could be iterated through.

13.1. csv — CSV File Reading and Writing — Python 2.7.10 documentation

A few changes I would make are removing the loop for the 3 scales, I was going to just have it set first scale, save, set second scale, save with new name, set 3rd scale, save with third name.  Other thing was to add field delimiters so you wouldn't have to change the select by layer expression depending on which input type you are using, shapefile, gdb fc, or sde fc.

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//018v0000006p000000 (copy/paste)

You wanting to keep it a script tool, or just run as a python script?

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GaryChedore
New Contributor III

Sounds Awesome, The script tool is likely the simplest approach.The scales set and saved would be a big improvement. Field delimiters also good. I appreciate your help.

Thanks

Gary

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