Zoom to slected feaure and print loop

[Anonymous User]

I need help please! I have only been coding for about 3 days. I am trying to write a script in arcpy that zooms to each selected feature in a feature class  and prints them as a PDF one by one.

So the script will first zoom to the first selected feature and print as a PDF, then zoom to the next one and print as a PDF and zoom to the third one and print as a PDF, and so on until it has gone down the list. Any help will be appreciated

[XanderBakker]

What do you have at this moment? Is this something that you want to offer as a tool or Add-In to end users? Are you working with ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro? Did you have a look at Create a map book with Python—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop or Building map books with ArcGIS—Help | ArcGIS Desktop ?

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

You may also want to look at What are Data Driven Pages?—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

[JoshuaBixby]

Is this a one-off task?  Does it have to be scripted or would something like Data Driven Pages work for you?

A rudimentary script that iterates through selected features in a layer and exports a JPG is below:

import os

out_folder = # Folder to dump exported JPEG or other file
lyr_with_sel = # Name of layer with selected features
scale = None # Set scale of export, None fits extent to selected feature

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

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(lyr_with_sel, ["OID@", "SHAPE@"]) as cur:
    for oid, shape in cur:
        df.extent = shape.extent
        if scale:
            df.scale = scale
        arcpy.RefreshActiveView()
        arcpy.mapping.ExportToJPEG(mxd,
                                   os.path.join(out_folder, "out_{}.jpg".format(oid)),
                                   df)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

If you have only been coding for 3 days, this may be pushing it a bit.  The basic script above utilizes several different aspects of ArcPy, I encourage you to understand how each one works.

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

and keep in mind that is the features your are zooming to are Point features, you will need to zoom out some since points have no geographic extent/area.

[JoshuaBixby]

That is why I put the scale variable into the script.  If None, it will size to the object; if set, it will center on the feature and zoom to the specified scale.

[Anonymous User]

Thank you guys. I was able to achieve what I wanted by simply using data driven pages, and specifying certain pages to print.