Latest Contributions by NathanShephard

Hi all, There are a number of ideas on this page, which is great. I wanted to see if you'd had a chance to try the new interactive Elevation Profile tool in ArcGIS Pro, to see if some of your workflows can be met. https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/exploratory-analysis/interactive-elevation-profile-basics.htm Quick summary of requests: Multi-surface support - not yet, but planned for a future release of Pro (ie: 3.1 or later) Vertical exaggeration - you can resize the chart size display (as an image), or export the display to a line feature or table (GDB or CSV) and create a Chart object directly Export as data (with distance-along axis values) - supported Show other vector features on profile line - not yet, but planned for a future release (3.1 or later) Ability to edit the profile line - supported (by editing the in-scene graphic reference line) Full control over appearance - supported (limited set of properties for the displayed graph, per below image, and full control by exporting to a data table and creating a Chart) Stacked profile graphs - not yet, but planned for a future release (3.1 or later), that will work on multiple surfaces in the scene (eg: geological strata) as well as 'top-most-hit-objects' (eg: the skyline of a city from the buildings) Pipeline graph case - potentially supported, because you can select many features and we will (in memory) attempt to collapse them to a single connected line for the profile graph. It won't support multi disconnected lines, though. Export to DWG/DXG - not supported, no plans at this time. Could potentially be handled by exporting to a 3D line feature first. Adding more than one dataset - not sure... is this similar to #7? Work fast / dynamically - yes, it pulls the max-resolution data from the elevation data sources that contribute to the Ground surface Set of cross sections - not supported yet, assuming similar to #7? If yes, then planned for future. Screenshot of profile graph display options (per #6) I hope this helps get you started on evaluating the interactive profile graph in Pro! Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Susan (et al), Thanks for submitting and voting for this idea. I realize it's an old one, so I am adding some information about how the interactive profile graph works in ArcGIS Pro, to see if this meets your needs. The interactive profile graph creates an in-scene graphic line - either from a newly digitized line, or by copying the geometry from an existing line feature. Editing that (graphic) line will update the profile graph... but... it does NOT maintain a reference to the feature it was initially pulled from. We don't maintain the link because there are many possible edits that could be done to the original source line (eg: add vertices, delete vertices, split feature, delete feature, etc), so rather than tracking all the possible changes that can happen, the recommended workflow is to keep the feature-you-want-the-profile-graph-built-from as SELECTED, and then click the 'Apply' button (as-needed) to update it, per the 19-sec mark of the above video. Can this workflow work for your needs? It's an extra click (to reload the elevation profile again), but it gives you full control as to WHEN the graph updates. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Dean, I reviewed the Help documentation and it's clear we need to do a better job describing the current behavior of the measure tool units. Below is a more detailed attempt at that. The current approach of “imperial” and “metric” is designed for general (casual) usage. The units change automatically within the “family” of units based on what’s good for the length/area you’re looking at, so you don’t have to keep manually changing the unit to get understandable values as you zoom in and out. For example, using Imperial: …you zoom in to measure the width of a road --> “38 feet” …then you zoom out to measure LA to San Fran --> “430 miles” …without having to change the units yourself. The default measure unit mode is always either Imperial or Metric, and it uses the appropriate default-unit in the backstage (Project – Options – Units) to choose which ‘family’ you get. For measure-distance tool, we look at the default Distance Units, and for the measure-area tool we look at the default Area Unit (so you can, for example, have Imperial distance and Metric area). Example - default distance unit of feet means 'Imperial' mode will be used for measure distances. If you change the Measure tool to a specific unit in the screen-overlay control (eg: Kilometer for distance and Hectares for areas), we remember and use that exact-unit for that view for the lifetime of the Pro app session, but it is not stored when saving/re-opening the app. We talked with the Parcels team and can see the benefit of storing an exact-default-unit for the Measure tool, so we'll add it to our list for inclusion in a future release.  Thanks for providing the feedback! -Nathan. ... View more

Thanks all! We added this capability into the core UI for ArcGIS Pro 2.6. To access the Field of view value for a 3D scene, right-click in the scene and enable the 'Camera' overlay control. You can set the angle value to a number between 0.1 and 170 degrees.  It is also accessible via the API, and is stored/honored in keyframes when you create an animation video (so you can better match real camera zooms, or, for example, mock up a dolly-zoom effect). Hope this helps! Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Randy, Good news - if you have Pro 2.6 or later, we've added a layer-option for this exact case --> that is, the ability to load irregular time-steps from a data source as the "steps" for the time slider. The main link in the Help for this topic is below --> it talks about the two time-slider options for this kind of data - that is: [1] use two-date-fields (instead of one) so features effectively stay displayed until a replacement feature becomes current; or [2] use the unique values within the data to set the stops to use when stepping forward in time. https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/time/irregularly-spaced-temporal-data.htm For the second option, the process is to first configure the layer with the irregular time-steps (from values in the data), and then configure the time slider to use that layer as its 'Step' source.  One extra tip - make sure you pay attention to the time-slider's duration value, because the 'step' process will move the entire time-duration forward based on the front/leading edge of the time slider. Hope this helps! Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Christian, There are basically two options (that don't require schema changes) --> use a Relate or use a Join. With a Relate, you use the tree-nodes at the top of the popup to navigate to the related content - for example, all the cities in a state (screenshot below). This works well for 1-to-many relationships (eg: from a building to all the rooms inside it), but it sounds like your relationships are more the 1-to-1 type. So, if you use a Join instead, the attributes from the 'to' feature class are appended as "extra attributes" on the source feature class. This can slow down the performance of the app (if the feature counts are high), but might be closer to what you want. Clicking on the main feature will then show attributes for the feature and the join tables. You are correct that you will need to keep the different features in order to symbolize them differently. Hope this helps! -Nathan. ... View more

Hi Alex, Sorry you're having troubles with the export. I would also recommend checking to see if you need a video driver update. Another basic check is confirming you have enough disk space to write the file (note that an AVI file export will be much larger than an MP4 file). For a practical / workaround thing to try, you could export your video in multiple parts. From your screenshot, the video gets to frame 1289, so you could try exporting the first 1200 frames and see if that works. If it does, you could then rinse-repeat the exports (for frames 1201-2400, etc), and merge the videos together into one file using a video editing application. If you have access to a higher-end video editor, another way to go is to export from Pro directly to a folder-of-image-frames (eg: get 4249 JPG files in a folder) and then convert the images into a single video file. Otherwise, I'm not sure why the export is failing for you, so I'd also recommend contacting Esri Support and logging an issue. If it is at all possible, sharing the problematic map package (with the animation) with the analyst would make it easier for them to test and debug the problem. It's possible you're hitting a bug in the software, or that a small change in the configuration of your animation could solve this for you. Hope this helps. -Nathan. ... View more

Hi Peter, Glad you're giving animation-using-range a shot!  Here's the help topic that describes how to maintain a constant "look-at" viewpoint across multiple keyframes in your animation. https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/mapping/animation/animate-the-camera.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_3381500A1AED43049AAC7A5B1A7C9E91 To be clear, it does not track (or lock on to) a feature, but rather it ensures the camera is always pointed at a fixed XYZ location. The primary use-case for this is a fly-around a feature (like a building) or a partial "hold eye contact" at a point (like a sign) as the camera flies past it. For the video link you sent, this technique was not used (because its not pointing at a fixed location). If you have a moving feature (or an extending connected series of line features, like the paraglider path), then you will need to update keyframes with a manually-edited camera viewpoint. Note that you do NOT have to give every keyframe a full camera definition, so if you have many (eg: hundreds) of keyframes you only need to apply a camera definition for a few of them, and the animation will interpolate between them. Depending on how you created the keyframes, they might already have no camera information. An easy way to see this is to change the filter on the Timeline pane (screenshot attached) so only 'Camera' is on, and see which keyframes disappear - for my example, keyframes 4,5,6 have no camera information.  To remove the camera information from a keyframe, select it (can select many at once) in the Timeline pane, open the Animation Properties pane (from the Animation ribbon's Edit group), select the Camera section, and click the arrow to move the values to the Disabled side (screenshot also attached). To add/update the camera properties for a keyframe, double-click it in the Timeline pane (you may need to disable the filter to see all the keyframes) to zoom to its current state (including range value), then move the camera to a good viewpoint, and click the 'Update' button on either the Timeline pane or in the Animation ribbon. I also recommend enabling the animation Path display option (on the far left of the Animation ribbon) and zooming out in the view to see the flight path of the camera. Hope this helps! Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Jamal, Here are some other links that might be useful (for interacting with attachments without code): Add/replace attachment images for a feature (via editing): https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/editing/edit-file-attachments.htm#GUID-DBB2786B-5674-4447-910E-DD7B5A187AAC  Display attachment images in Pop-Ups: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/mapping/navigation/pop-ups.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_7D5DF79AC9CD407F947BE4FAB7F18E8E  Include attachment images in Reports: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/reports/attachment-report-elements.htm Hope this helps! Thanks, -Nathan. ... View more

Hi Dave, Glad you're working through this project (and thanks for doing the MOOC). Here is some general info that might help explain what you're seeing regarding Detail 1: 'Transitions' are stored in the 'To-Keyframe' (think of them as "how do I get to this end state") This means that Keyframe-1 doesn't have a transition at all (per your top screenshot) Which is why 'Transition' is grayed out in the UI (for that selected keyframe) Extra mini-note - animations don't run in Layout views (unless you activate the frame) I would recommend staying in the Map view exclusively when making an animation Transitions have sub-components: camera; time; range; layer Camera -> how the camera moves; Time -> how the time-slider moves; etc Transition sub-components can use different types of math for calculating how the value/s change EG: The camera-movement-transition can be 'Linear' (for straight line flight path) EG: The time-transition can be 'Stepped' (for a 'leap' to the next time) The top screenshot in my previous post shows how to change just the time sub-component  The icon for the 'circle' shows in the Timeline Pane is for the camera transition subtype (only) And if your extent never changes, it won't matter what the transition type is for this component That is, don't worry about the displayed transition type for your animation The 'mixed mode' you're seeing is an advanced option, where you can change individual properties within a sub-component (eg: the 'X' coordinate of the camera can transition using 'Linear', while the 'Y' and 'Z' coordinates could transition using 'Fixed curve').  I'll expand a bit on how you (probably) got to this state a bit further down. It's pretty advanced animating, and not something you're likely to need to do on purpose. So... on a practical level... the only transition sub-component you need to ensure is Stepped is 'Time'. And the best way to do that for all the keyframes is to: select all keyframes in the Timeline pane (the one at the bottom of the view); click on one of the transition icons (doesn't matter which one; and expand the 'Time' sub-menu and click "Stepped".  The fact that your time animation seems to be OK tells me that you are probably already OK on that front. Just figured I'd put it here for posterity. Regarding the 'mixed mode' result -> this was probably the result of changing the 'Transition' type in the Animation Properties pane (the one that appears on the side of the view) without selecting an entire section of properties. It's easiest to understand visually (per below) - for your use case, you want to select an entire section (per the right side) before you set the Transition type.  I suspect you accidentally selected-and-edited a sub-component of the camera (per the left side). The above info on mixed-mode just an FYI. None of this matters for an animation where the camera doesn't move. To get all the icons back to a single type (if you wanted to), select all the keyframes in the Timeline pane, click one of the icons, expand Camera, and pick a transition type (eg: Stepped). Phew. Well, that was more info than I expected to put in for detail 1. Hopefully it's helpful for general knowledge. Regarding Detail 2, I think you just need to update the Time extent for the last keyframe. It's possible / likely that the time-slider state was just captured incorrectly -> eg: with the std 5-year span, instead of the custom span needed for the final (non-5-yr) extent of the data. Steps: Select the last keyframe (in the Animation Timeline pane) In the Time ribbon, update the 'Current Time' extent of the time-slider (screenshot below) as needed Note that the 'Full Extent' properties are basically data metadata, and are not used in the animation In the Animation ribbon, update the selected keyframe by clicking the 'Update' button in the Edit group Tip: double-click on the second-last keyframe, and then again on the last-keyframe to zoom to a refreshed view of it -> the dynamic text should be updated to the new 'end' time value. Hope this gets you to where you need to be! Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Dave, If I understand correctly, you want to see 5 years of earthquake data (displayed in a static way, for a few seconds), and then step forward in one step to the next 5 years (for a few seconds), for all your data?  If so, there are two ways that come to mind. [1] Set the time transition type to "Stepped" (screenshot below) for each of your keyframes. This will move the time component for the map immediately to the time of the end keyframe.  One extra tip - this means that the time duration for Keyframe 1 will show for 1/30th of a second before it moves to the duration time of Keyframe 2. You can add a 'hold' to the first keyframe (or just duplicate it using Append Front) to ensure it gets included properly in the video. [2] Export the video with a very slow frame-rate that matches your keyframe interval.  For example, if you want to show each 5-year span for 2 seconds (and the spacing for all keyframes are the same), then you can export a video at 0.5 frames/second and it will only capture the images for your actual keyframes. It also has the advantage of making smaller video files. This technique won't work if the camera / view extent is moving. Hope one of the above techniques works for you! -Nathan. ... View more

Ha, fair enough. My apologies for the delay. Yes, it is in 2.5, so looks like I get to live another day. Best of luck! -Nathan. ... View more

Unfortunately, there’s no way to access the map’s current time (from the time slider) in AGOL yet. We’re considering adding this in a future release of Arcade, which would make it available across the ArcGIS Platform. You would then be able to drive feature symbology based on the state of the map’s time slider. Thanks for posting the idea, Savannah! -Nathan. ... View more