Latest Contributions by TimLangner

Just an additional $00.02:  I make it a practice of scanning my data for and then deleting null geometries through the attribute table; look for the feature size (area or length) value that tips you off. ... View more

Thanks for your reply I read through the article but it makes for difficult reading because I've never used geometric networks or any of the connect or disconnect commands. As I was connecting to an ArcSDE Geodatabase, which of course cannot have any geometric errors corrected, even those created after the upload of data. In fact if you didn't upload any data you can't have created any errors prior to the data creation. It's one of the negative points of ArcSDE Geodatabases, which has many pluses but when you hit problems like this, you sometimes wonder if this outweighs them. It wouldn't be so bad if complete archives could be exported. Then you could export all the data, clean it and reimport it. Alas you can't do that, which is why problems like this become a much larger issue. Kind regards Tim ... View more

I have now managed to crash ArcMap at will whilst tracing and I have submitted the steps I took, along with a sample dataset to ESRI UK Technical support. I also enclosed two dumps because they could not be sent to ESRI at the point. I'm aware the the UK support cannot use these but ESRI in America may be able to. I even have a screenshot for one of the time's it crashed. Kind regards ... View more

The Bug IS BACK!  Exporting fc as table and doing the join worked though.  I'm in ArcMap 10.5.1, using SQL Server 2012 db. ... View more

Through my persevering this issue was forwarded to ESRI in America who confirmed there was already a bug number assigned to this, NIM076428. It's not however publicly searchable on-line only internally by ESRI. Not sure why this is the case but I've asked the technical support guy in the UK why it is. No time scale as to when it will be fixed but I guess at least it is known about. I think perhaps I should stop digitising, then I wouldn't find these bugs. I'm hoping that 10.1 will resolve a lot of these issues and won't just be a release with more functionality containing more bugs and not many fixes for previous ones. I'm aware that the software is complex and works very well in a lot of areas but when you keep being confronted by buys every day, even low level ones, you do start to wish they would fix more of them sooner. Kind regards ... View more

I just wish to add that if I get an error saying "A geometry error has occurred" when reshaping a feature, then fairly often I will just draw the reshape and merge it with the existing feature. This usually solves gets round the reshape problem but whether it deals with the issue that caused the "A geometry error has occurred" message is another matter. Possibly not. Kind regards Tim ... View more

Thank you for your comments. That is just what I was looking for. I assume could I then create a view of the results which is accessible in ArcMap, although it wouldn't be possible to update it but then it isn't possible to do that is a Make Query Table, which I have been using. I actually did the distinct work in Excel this time and then used the Make Query Table to join this new table. I then exported this new table because it isn't possible to do a relate on a Make Query Table. For sound reasons I am sure but then I fail to see the sound reasons why a make query table can't be edited in the first place. Hopefully ESRI will add such a feature in a later release of ArcMap. By importing this new table I could do a relate to get the rows that did not match and I could then manually update them. Quite long winded but it at least allowed me to do what I required. Kind regards Tim ... View more

A while ago I recall hearing the built in select by attributes dialogue having already started querying the data when it is opened (list of fields, names, joins etc) which already takes care of some of the overhead that the arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management() still has to go through. Making different selections based on changing criteria that you input will not gain you any performance using python scripts than using the built in tools, or else Esri would have coded the built in dialogue to be the same as the arcpy tool. The performance gain is in automation. Not having to query the same (or similar) data over and over and over and over again. Another method you may want to try is creating a feature layer query. http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000006p000000 Using a where clause with this tool may give you the performance speed you are looking for, depending on why you need to make a selection at all. Thanks for your reply Matt. What I'm doing is a series of quick visual and data checks. 1. I am checking that features are assigned to the correct road and using the correct UPRN (UK address id). 2. If the features are assigned to the wrong road then I need to switch to the LLPG layer in my query and search on the street name so that I can then update the details of the incorrect assigned features. It's a fair quick task in terms of the query itself but requires me to switch between the two layers constantly. The queries are very similar because the tables use the same field names for the fields I am checking. However every time I switch layers in ArcGIS, in the select attributes window, it removes the what I have typed. In addition to that it is very easy to lose the Select attribute window, as it gets hidden behind the create feature window; table and identify windows which I have open. If I then go to the menu and hit Select by attributes, nothing appears and I then have it hunt around to find it hidden behind other windows. I could put it on the the map side but it obscures the map. I'd rather leave it open than close it. By using the Python window I can use ALT+TAB to switch to it. I can amend my script,save and hit run. It's not possible to switch however to the select by attributes window in ArcGIS. I guess my issues are really myself trying to find ways around annoying GUI interface issues, as opposed to a genuine need to do this in python but I thought perhaps Python might be a good workaround, until ESRI, if they ever do so, improve the GUI interface. What would be good is something along the lines of SQL Developer. In fact you can have multiple tabs open and from those run multiple queries and scripts which all output to the output window. Kind regards Tim ... View more

Hi Matt Your quite right. It was that. I was using the syntax for personal geodatabases when I'm working with an SDE geodatabase. My revised code is: arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management ("Full area polygons layer outline only v5", "NEW_SELECTION", """ [AREA_NAME] = 'AREA 3' """) Saying that after I got my new code to work and it had selected the features, ArcMap shortly froze. However on restarting ArcMap it then worked, after several error messages about valid index range being passed. That may be a freak event, as I'm new to working with the Python window. Kind regards ... View more

Great news; good luck! ... View more

Hi Brent No what I want is a complete copy of the whole archive. Not  any set point in time but the whole archive. Imagine I was going to  publish a book detailing the chronological history of a place. Say I give the  book to the printers to print 10,000 copies. The printer wouldn't just print the  final section containing the most recent history, no they would print every page  in the book. That is what I wish to achieve when doing a feature class to  feature class copy. Although our complete geodatabase gets backed up, it is  backed up by our IT department and they have no GIS knowledge or knowledge of  ArcSDE. Thus it is far easier for me to restore the feature class from my own  backup copy, should any data issues arise, then asking IT to do it. However I  cannot do this with archiving enabled. I have added a post to ESRI ideas.  So if anyone else would like this extremely useful function, add your support  there. Not signed into or don't have an ESRI account use this link: http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000brpcAAA Signed into an ESRI account use this link: https://c.na1.visual.force.com/apex/ideaView?id=08730000000brpc&returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26sort%3Drecent Kind  regards Tim ... View more

Maybe, the day when we can use ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 to directly edit feature classes in a non-SDE database, that day will be the end day for ArcSDE. Right, ESRI staff? I'm not sure if ESRI want to get rid of ArcSDE. I do prefer the fact that MapInfo can directly write back to Oracle spatial data tables. However that is not to say that everything else about MapInfo is better than ArcGIS. I only used MapInfo for digitising in the past but people I speak to locally say they prefer ArcGIS on the whole. Just ashame though that one can't write directly back to Oracle. I only want to do that so I can write more advanced and at times easier SQL queries on my data and even commit those changes outside of ArcMap, since the ArcMap Jet SQL is rather basic in comparison. ... View more

Looks like I am going to have to experiment on this one. Hi Raymond. Did you ever find a work around? I spoke to ESRI (UK) about this issue and they confirmed that it is not possible to create a duplicate of an archive. Using feature class to feature class causes it to become orphaned. I've not investigated it fully to see if it is the archive which is orphaned and whether ti creates many orphaned feature classes if many changes have been made over time. I put up another thread here: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/40062-History-of-versioned-data-after-feature-class-to-feature-class?highlight=backup and an ArcGIS idea here, which can be promoted: http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000brpcAAA Kind regards Tim ... View more

Tim, I didn't see your scerenshots nor the steps to reproduce the problem.  I would be interested in seeing the problem. Everyone should note that "trace" at 10 does not work at very large scales for obvious reasons. IE  you can't see what you are tracing and I also suspect it has more to do with the caches/builds referred to above. I submitted the steps to ESRI. I can't put screenshots because it's licensed data. I was only tracing at a scale of 1:300 and I do not consider this to be large. ESRI were able to reproduce the problem with my data. A simply solution would be to turn off one of my layers and then it don't occur but when I'm working I'm more interested in getting my digitising accurate than worrying about whether a layer has to be switched off at this precise moment or ArcMap will crash. I personally think the issue relates to the fact ArcMap is trying to chose which line to trace, with them being close and it crashes because it gets swamped with the decision. My work place doesn't have the resources to go on the ArcGIS 10.1 beta programme so I don't know if 10.1 would behave any better with this. Kind regards ... View more