Latest Contributions by curtvprice

Sorry to say, I kind of dropped the ball and didn't push Esri for a Metadata SIG in the virtual UC this year. I apologize, I simply didn't think of it.  Nevertheless, there is a lot of great content in the UC on open systems and interoperability, see:  https://community.esri.com/community/open-platform-standards-and-interoperability/blog/2020/07/13/join-us-virtually-at-the-esri-uc-2020  and:Aleta Vienneau‌'s on-demand tech session: Understanding and Using Metadata in ArcGIS. Aleta recorded a nice video reviewing the metadata experience on Desktop and Online, and demonstrating value of metadata when rescuing old data. She also showed how to set up metadata on ArcGIS Enterprise so that metadata updates migrate and stay in synch to AGOL when edited. If you did not sign up for the EsriUC, the EsriUC content is expected to go public on September 1 (if not earlier).  Personally, I had some experience with the Python metadata module this year, using it in this tool DLG To GDB  that imports DLG data, I wanted to capture some of the information stored in the original DLG file in the metadata so it would not be lost to the sands of time. It worked great! So if you want to see a real-world example of that ArcGIS Pro arcpy module, you can download that tool. (Even if you don't have Interoperability Extension and can't run the tool, you can edit the script tool to look at the python code and see what it does.) I did catch up with Aleta yesterday through the EsriUC networking tool. She is planning a Metadata SIG online meeting later this year, look for details posted here to the Metadata community soon. Warm regards, metadata-heads! I missed meeting you in San Diego! ... View more

It sure would be great to access Windows environment variables in ModelBuilder as builtin model variables. For example %COMPUTERNAME% %USERNAME% or user defined ones set in the Windows Control Panel or in a startup script. I realize one can do this with Calculate Value calling os.environ["COMPUTERNAME"], but this would be easier. Way back in the 20th century, in ArcInfo Workstation AML, we could access windows env variables like AML variables with %COMPUTERNAME%. In that environment, if a windows environment variable conflicted with an AML variable, the AML variable would always take precedence to avoid confusion. I think that would be a good way to do it in ModelBuilder too. A very common use case for me is constructing path names, so for example %TEMP%\%USERNAME%_%t% ... View more