Data Driven Pages and rasters

[ThomasBalstroem]

Hello,
I can't see that it is possible to include raster layers into Data Driven Pages. Is it planned for development? I would like to produce a Map Book from satellite images that comes in daily for a specific area. So, enabling replacement of raster layers would be great!
Kind regards,
Thomas Balstroem
GISConsult, Denmark

[JeffBarrette]

Thomas,

Do your rasters come with any sort of vector footprint that could be incorporated into an index layer?  If not, there are GP functions that do this (e.g., BuildFootPrints, BuildBoundaryTool). 

I'd like to know more about your workflow.  Do you create individual map books based on just the new data or is it constantly expanding?

Thanks,
Jeff

[ThomasBalstroem]

Hello Jeff,
We're achieving satelite images on a daily basis for the same study area to monitor the extent of a sediment plume where a river has its outlet into the sea. To present the plume's development to the authorities we would like to create a map book that expands on a daily basis. Maybe we will organize the rasters in a raster dataset for each month. That hasn't been decided, yet.
As the rasters will go into the Raster Dataset, it will be easy to create footprints that could be used as an index layer to the data driven pages.
I hope this explains my plan.

A side question: Do you know of a GP tool to create a footprint for a single raster not stored in a raster dataset?

Thanks,
Thomas

[DaveLaPlante]

Hi Thomas

This is actually pretty straightforward.  Create an UNMANAGED raster catalog and then load the rasters you want to use in the data driven pages document into it using the 'Rasters To Geodatabase (multiple)' tool. The default 'Name' field is a memo field and won't work as a DDP reference field, so add a new text field (length 255 or less) to the catalog and calculate the values from the 'Name' field.  Next, use the 'Copy Features' tool to convert the raster catalog into a polygon index feature class.  Add the catalog and index to the map document, create data driven pages from the index using the new field you added, set the DDP defintion for the raster catalog to the same field, and you're good to go.

Dave

[ThomasBalstroem]

Hi Dave and many thanks for you great advice. I'm on an extended Easter holiday without ArcGIS so I have to wait until Tuesday 26th to try out your solution.
Kind regards, Thomas

[ThomasBalstroem1]

Hello David and thanks for your patience.
Having built my unmanaged raster catalog stored in a file geodatabase I can display the various raster files from within ArcCatalog. But please give me a clue about how to display a specific raster from the catalog from within ArcMap? I can't find any documentation hereon in the Desktop Help.
Kind regards,
Thomas

[DaveLaPlante]

Hi Thomas

For clarification, have you created the index feature class and DDP map document?

Dave

[PrestonDowell]

Dave,

Your process worked flawlessly for me. Thank you for helping, it is making me look good!