adding layers in a standalone script

[JonPedder]

Has anyone successfully accomplished this? Seriously I???m not being sarcastic.

What I presumed to be a very simple task has me flummoxed. Simply adding a featureclass as a layer to an mxd.

All commands work perfectly when run in a geoprocessing python session, yet they fail when running in a standalone script. Is it maybe something in my environment settings? I???ve tried to cover them all here.

# Set enviroment arcpy.env.workspace arcpy.env.scratchGDB arcpy.env.scratchFolder

I???ve tried writing the layers to disk then reading them in, adding with AddLayer and AddtoGroup, insertLAyer etc. I can get a layer to add when pulling from disk yet it won???t display in the TOC (you can see it's there if I iterate the layers). I have RefreshTOC and RefrenceActiveView

Here???s a test script I???ve been playing with.

# Add layers to the map mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"C:\Users\mymap.mxd")  # List data frame and layers frame = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd,'Dataframe')[0] refFeatureLayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd,'*New_Layer*',frame)[0]  # create a new layer from an existing featureclass travel_route_1 = "Travel_Routes" tempLayer = arcpy.MakeFeatureLayer_management(travel_route_1,'my test layer')  # Save layer to disk arcpy.SaveToLayerFile_management (tempLayer, r'C:\Users\test layer.lyr')  # List data frame and layers - just to refresh the list, shouldn't need to do this. frame = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd,'Dataframe')[0] refFeatureLayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd,'*test*',frame)[0]  # Get the layer addLayer = arcpy.mapping.Layer(r'C:\Users\test layer.lyr')  # Add the layer to the dataframe arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(frame, addLayer, "BOTTOM")  # List data frame and layers - just to refresh the list, shouldn't need to do this. frame = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd,'Dataframe')[0] refFeatureLayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd,'*test*',frame)[0]  # Finally move the layer movelayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd,'*my*',frame)[0] arcpy.mapping.MoveLayer(frame,refFeatureLayer,movelayer,"AFTER")  arcpy.RefreshTOC() arcpy.RefreshActiveView()

[Anonymous User]

Jeff,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I've been running into dead ends on

this. I'm running 10.2.2 so it's my understanding that I shouldn't have the

AddLayer bug (is that correct?).

Your suggestion worked! I couldn't be happier or more confused as

to why this works but the other (ESRI resources suggested) way doesn't.

Here's what I ended up running successfully:

precipLayer = arcpy.mapping.Layer(r"D:\Active\ArcPY\10x\ScrumWorks\Data\Drive_A\basin_utmcopy.shp")

mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")

df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd)[0]

#arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(df, precipLayer.getOutput(0), "TOP")  # GOT ERROR: getOutput(0) doesn't exist

arcpy.mapping.AddLayer(df, precipLayer, "TOP")

I'll update the other post with your suggestion.

Thank you very much!

Madeline

[JeffBarrette]

I’m glad my suggestion helped. I can’t explain why you are seeing what you are seeing. One difference is that I’m on 10.3 (not released yet) but I’m not aware of changes. This issue may be a core arcpy issue and not specific to arcpy.mapping (my area of development). I’ll forward this onto someone on that team to see if there was a known issue that was addressed.

Anyway, I hope you can continue forward,

Jeff