Hi, I'm a newbie attempting to build a fire service map book. What inputs are necessary?

[BuckySwider]

Hi guys, a mapping newbie/volunteer fire officer here.  I'm attempting to create a fire run book using the "Fire Service Maps" add-on on ArcGIS PRO 2.2.  Some really basic stuff is stumping me already.

I did procure parcel outlines and Streets shapefiles from the county, but I don't know when/where to use them.  I'm going through the tasks and I'm at "Load data into SiteAddressPoint feature class".  Here's what it's giving me the option of doing: 

I suppose I could just forge forward and try to see if the streets shapefile is able to be pulled in here, but I thought it'd be better if I asked first.  And when should I import the parcel outlines shapefile?

Sorry for the newb question.  (And I'm sure I'll have more to come!)

Thanks!  

[BuckySwider]

AAARRRGGGHHHH

I thought I had it.    

When selecting the shapefile as input fo the append, it gives me an error for a table mismatch or something like that.  Looks like I have to convert it to a feature class in a gdb first.  Back to my homework assignments!!!  

[BuckySwider]

To restate the obvious, yes, Mike, you were dead on .  Importing the feature class is (now I know this!) equivalent to importing the shapefile.  So all the way back to square 1 I went, almost- running feature-to-point and importing that feature class back to the SiteAddressPoint.  But think of everything I learned because of my mistaken assumptions!!!

So now on to step 2, and running into another puzzler. Importing the StreetCenterlines.  Same drill, change he shapefile into a feature class, then append that onto the RoadCenterlines feature class of the target dataset.  Matched all the input fields to the output fields, but the append is failing with "Error 0001156:  Failed on Input OID 1, could not write value ' ' to output field FROMLEFT".  

The FROMLEFT, of course, is the "Lowest address range on the left side of the road" which is mapped to my input field L_F_ADD.  And the schema says "IsNullable" is TRUE, so I don't need any value there (which makes sense).  I wonder if there may be a space character in here that it's choking on?  Would be a tough one to find and remedy.

I did look into the ETL from ActMap, and apparently my license doesn't allow that, so it's a non-starter.  

After this fromleft challenge, my next one will be to create a feature class to demarcate my  FireDistrict.  I thought I could skip that one, but well, I think that's how the utility knows exactly how to pare down the whole map and just draw the necessary pages.  This will simply be my entire municipality (township).  I think I'm going to try to use the "PA Municipality Boundaries" tool and then see if I can somehow cut it down to just my township.  That will be another learning experience.  I guess I just can't go in and edit the table of the feature class and remove everything else?  I don't know yet.

Oh yeah, and figure out what it's asking for with the "FireIMapndex" inport data.   

Til tomorrow...

Thanks guys for all your help!!!  

[JoeBorgione]

So it looks like Joe's homework is entirely relevant...

Sometimes I get lucky...

It's always good practice to google 'arcgis errorNumber':   001156: Failed on input OID ; could not write value '' to output field .—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

Take a close look at both your input data and the target feature class field properties; this error indicates a mismatch.  Sometimes address range values are numeric, sometimes text...

[BuckySwider]

Looks like I have some whitespace instead of nullls.   Looked thru all the rows and the ones that aren't blank are numeric (plus the error text points to " ").  The target field is long integer with ISNULLABLE set to true.  Working on finding a way to use the field calculator to change whitespace to nulls- I asked a question over in the "Managing Data" forum to save you guys the tedium (and to save this thread from drifting too far of the course of what's required for the Fire Maps).

Will report back!!  

[JoeBorgione]

nulls versus whitespace....  don't get me started!

[MichaelVolz]

I think you may need to drift into multiple topics to complete this project, one of which I have already mentioned is your python environment for adding the required python module.  You probably also are going to need python to script out the data transformation from your current data set(s) to the LGIM as you can see from the null space issues that you are running into.

[BuckySwider]

Yeah, there's probably gonna be a few oddities like this.  But on the bright side, the Points field appended properly!!

First try (because it seems to be easiest!) is to copy the text fields into long fields.  Exacerbating this issue is the switch to ArcGIS pro- mostly all the help articles I've found show how to do things in ArcMap. I could probably just go back to ArcMap to massage my input data, but I think it's probably better to bite the bullet now and figure it out in Pro so I have a good documented process for two years from now when someone has to do this again and ArcMap is no longer available.  For example, the article I found says to create new fields and copy.  But they give a VB example and, of course, that's no longer around in Pro.  So I have to figure out the equivalent in Python, SQL, or Arcade (whatever the heck THAT is!!!)

[JoeBorgione]

What are you trying to do?  Populate a numeric field with text data or populate a text field with numeric field?  In the field calculator you can 'cast' as text field as numeric or a numeric field as text.

Here I have a value in my field 'TextField' which is a string of characters '1234' and I want to treat that string as an integer with the python int() function:

Conversely, I can populate a text field with the value of a numeric field with the python str() function:

[BuckySwider]

Thanks Joe!  That's on the right track- I think I have to put together a little codeblock to handle the empty/null fields though.  It bombs out trying to convert a nothing into an INT.  

[JoeBorgione]

Is it an empty string or a true <null> value?  ArcGIS Pro takes a little getting used to.  Personally, I like to work with true <null> values.  An empty string can be '' or ' ' , or '   ' or'     '....

Which value do you trap for?  How many blanks did I insert in each of those records?