Welcome to the ArcGIS 9.4 Map Automation forum. ArcGIS 9.4 gives you many new ways to automate repetitive mapping tasks. The Map Automation forum is the venue where you can ask questions about these new capablities and share you insights with the entire ArcGIS community.
The following is an overview of the new Map Automation capabilities:
[INDENT]At 9.4, ArcMap natively supports basic map book functionality. The ArcMap page layout has been extended to support multipage printing and export. The extent of each map on the page can be driven by features in a map layer, providing a simple and easy way to define multiple pages for output to a printer or multi-page PDF document. This new functionality, called "Data Driven Pages", provides an official, fully supported replacement for the DsMapBook developer sample used by many people in 9.3 and earlier.
ArcGIS 9.4 also extends Geoprocessing python support to allow processing of map documents. By combining this new Geoprocessing functionality with the built-in multi-page support, you can use ArcGIS 9.4 to create a complete PDF map book with a title page, multiple map pages, tabular reports, contact lists, informational text, etc. And because it is part of the Geoprocessing framework, you can even deploy your map book script as an ArcGIS Server Geoprocessing service, allowing any user in your organization to get an up-to-date map book at any time.
Because Geoprocessing scripts are able to work with map documents in batch, ArcGIS 9.4 also allows you to perform a wide variety of map and layer management tasks through Python scripts. Some examples include updating symbology and layers, updating and repairing layer data sources, and saving map documents to prior versions. All of these operations can be performed for a large number of map files, automating tedious tasks and allowing you to focus on your important creative and analytical work.
Some of the new things Python scripts can do in ArcGIS 9.4:
[INDENT]â?¢Open and Save Map Documents
â?¢Export and Print Maps and Merge and Save PDF Documents
â?¢Read and modify Data Frame Properties
â?¢Read and modify Layers and Tables
â?¢Read and modify Layout Elements[/INDENT][/INDENT]
Again, welcome to the forum and thank you for your participation!
Michael Grossman
ESRI
