Latest Contributions by ChrisSnyder

@ Dan: That is pretty cool... @ Jim: Maybe a hybrid? Tags would work if: 1. There is a pick list of standardized tags. 2. The tag pick list is HIGHLY visible (before the message body) and it's obvious that you can and should put multiple tags. 3. You are required to provide at least one tag. 4. There is some "gateway" page that gives easy access to "tag pages" (example: the "Python Tag Page" gateway lists all the posts tagged with "Python"). On the flip side (my side): Splitting the forums is a quick and easy way to enforce lower-level categorization (a pseudo-tag if you will). ... View more

Dan, it's funny since, before you mentioned it, I didn't even know there was an ArcGIS Desktop - General topic in the new forum! I guess that shows either how out of the loop I am or how poorly the new forum is organized. Probably a combination of the two.... Personally, I find it strange that ESRI designed the new forum in such an unusual way: With various elements of ArcGIS desktop functionality scattered about in different forum sections instead of one section called "ArcGIS Desktop" with all the ArcGIS Desktop-related forums organized underneath in  a drill down-type menu structure: + ArcGIS Desktop    - Installations    - ArcObjects    - Spatial Analyst    - Network Analyst    - Scripting (Python)    - Cartography    - Work Flows    - Model Builder    - Other (General) #Make sure this one is at the bottom, right?!? Or maybe even... + ArcGIS Desktop    + Extentions       - Spatial Analyst       - Network Analyst    + Functions       - Cartography       + Geoprocessing          + Automation             - Scripting (Python)             - Model Builder          - Tools (ArcToolbox)          - Workflows Who knows...   One would think people generally know what software they are using (Desktop vs. ImageServer vs. ArcIMS), and it seems pretty logical to organize a forum in that way as well. I understand that many ESRI products share functionality, for example, you can use ModelBuilder with both ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Desktop (no reason that a ModelBuilder topic from ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Desktop can't point to the same "ModelBuilder" forum, right? Makes sense...). However, ESRI's interpretation of these related functions/topics results in something that, to me, appears very cluncky, confusing, and non-intuitive. Perhaps ESRI staff could one day redesign the interface to create more of the drill-down/expandable structure based on Software? That would be very intuitive! Along those lines, it's pretty easy to understand why there are so many posts to the "ArcGIS Desktop - General" forum (that should & could be put under one of the exisitng Function topics): 1) The current forum is confusing to navigate since it organizes the forum using this new and different concept of "shared" and "related" functionality, and not a flat and understandable software-centric aproach. 2) The "ArcGIS Desktop - General" forum topic is at the top of the forum lists: See http://forums.arcgis.com/ and http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/4-Products! Question: Are all these ArcGIS Desktop-related forum topics really "Products" (they are all listed under the "Products" sub-heading)? Maybe I'm alone here, but when I think "Product" I think of a particular software, and not: 1) ArcGIS Desktop - General 2) ArcGIS Desktop - Extensions 3) ArcGIS Desktop - Installation, Configuration 4) ArcObjects - All Development Languages Hmm... I'm confused. ... View more

Maybe try looking for the standard PGDG tables inside the .mdb. For example, all PGDBs have a table called GDB_ReleaseInfo. ... View more

WARNING: The CreateRandomPoints tool has a fatal flaw! Upon running the tool in a loop (for example, 30 loops and each loop creates 69 points each = 2070 points total), many of the "random" points are not spatially unique between loop iterations! In fact when I ran this tool as part of a Monte Carlo simulation, using 30 loops and 69 points each loop, only 483 of the 2070 points occur once! The other 1587 points were duplicated - up to 11 times!!! ^&%*&^% ^&%*&^%  ^&%*&^% !!! Now I have to rewrite my own script to create non-repeating pseudo-random points AND rerun my model (which takes two weeks to complete). Dang... I reported this to ESRI last week, and the assigned it NIM060871 with a fix priority as "Low" - Go figure. If you are interested, I am almost done with my own random point creation tool that mixes up the random number generator's "state" (and thus the derived point locations) using a single line of code (ESRI?): random.jumpahead(int(time.time() * 100)) #probably more precise than necessary, but... Anyway - beware of this tool if you plan to run it in a loop or even multiple times. The chance that you will get duplicate random points is extremely high. ... View more

How many rows are in your table? ... View more

Regardless of your beliefs either way, the vote tally so far (ESRI employees are not included): Disclamer: If I put someone in the wrong category - all apologies. NO SPLIT (1 vote) ---------------- Dan Patterson Ted Cronin originally was 'No Split' but then appeared to change his mind here: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/10092-Should-this-forum-be-SPLIT?p=32651&viewfull=1#post32651, so unless he says otherwise, I am putting him in the 'yes' category. YES SPLIT (6 votes): --------------- Chris Snyder R.D Harles Ted Cronin Dave Bouwman Chris Sergant Sheri Norton UNDECIDED (1 vote): --------------- Chris Mathers Personally, I think the tag idea has merit. However, with the new forum and resource center site in it's current state of dysfunctionality, the chance of an already busy ESRI staff quickly implementing a brand new method (that presumably requires substantial R&D) to consistently "scrape" and apply appropriate "metatags" to forum posts is exceedingly unlikely. I think ESRI had it right in the old forum, and it seemed to work quite well. In the interest of helping posters and contributors alike, my vote is for ESRI to swiftly split the existing Geoprocessing Forum into: 1.) Scripting (Python) 2.) Modelbuilder 3.) Tools (ArcToolBox) BTW: Cudos to ESRI for getting rid of the 'Nautical Mapping' forum... ... View more

Just use the SQL paramater of either the MakeFeatureLayer or MakeTableView tool, then the GetCount tool. It should take like 1 second. Some v9.3 code for example: gp.MakeFeatureLayer_management(indxTileFC, indxTileFL, "FID_local_know_nw > -1") if int(gp.GetCount_management(indxTileFL).getoutput(0)) > 0:    gp.Blah_managment(this, that, theOther) ... View more

Oh my, that's so ESRI... I have a A LOT of code to rewrite! ... View more

Verified... The ability to turn off the stretch is new in v10 (v9.3 lacked the "Raster Layer" tab). ... View more

Is this only for v10? In v9.3 under the "raster" options there is a check box for "Display raster layers with contrast stretching" which is checked off by default (so you would then think that a stretch would not be used). I find that as long as a raster has had the stats calculated for it (no matter if the box is checked or not), the stretch renderer kicks in every time. One of the most notable display issues I have with this is that it makes my hillshade models appear darker than the should. The only way I can get it to NOT use the streatch by default is if I delete the .aux file and have ArcMap rebuild it (without stats). ... View more

Just specify a stretch type of None and it should look okay... That's what I do at least. An annoying fact: If you calculate statistics for a raster, it automatically applies a stretch to the symbology (standard deviation by default). Not sure why its is like that, nor why ESRI would by default assume most users would want to apply a complex stretch factor to their raster symbology. Hmm... ... View more

In v9.3 it was: gp.overwriteoutput = True So I am assuming in v10 it would be: arcpy.overwriteoutput = True ... View more

What sort of object is 'item' in the line: for item in elevationPointList: Is it a featureclass, cursor row, or? Also, could you re post your code using the code tags (#) so that the indentation is preserved? ... View more

A FGDB should have excellent performance. In my experience, an in_memory table is only about 20-30% faster than a FDGB or Shapefile (not 5x). This may sound silly, but in your script I noticed that you were specifying precision and scale parameters for the ALLELEV field: gp.AddField(allPoints,"ALLELEV","DOUBLE",15,6) FGDB format doesn't honor precision and scale (should just ignore them), but... Try leaving them off and see what happens in FGDB format. Also, maybe out of habit rather than necessity, I always enter the gp tool parameters as text. I would write your line: gp.AddField(allPoints,"ORIGFC","TEXT",50) as gp.AddField(allPoints,"ORIGFC","TEXT","50") It would be useful to know what specific tool is causing the holdup. You can retrieve the tool messages (only after the tool completes) using the gp.getmessages() command. For example: gp.AddField(allPoints,"ORIGFC","TEXT","50"); print gp.getmessages() ... View more

You are doing what I do, build folders every so often. Another, but slower, option is to store the rasters in a FGDB, which I believe has no raster storage limit, but has the added overhear of reformatting the grid to FGDB format. I have to agree: ESRI has made it very hard to process rasters efficiently! Some of the issue is that many of the underlying algorithms (file I/O and what not) were written 20+ years ago, and are not really optimized for modern computes. My main gripe however, has been that you can't run two or more ArcGIS Spatial Analyst tools concurrently on the same machine. I have written Python code that basically does vector and tabular parallel processing (tiles a dataset up into pieces and runs each piece concurrently), but for some reason you can't do that with the SA tools! It's sad/funny since you CAN do this in workstation ArcInfo! I have reported/complained to ESRI about this for quite a while and never gotten a good answer. Last I heard it was in their user advocacy group... ... View more