Latest Contributions by ArcGISUser

In ArcMap 10, with the Customize dialog window open and the Commands tab active, at the very end of the Categories list there should be: [Geoprocessing Tools] [Menu] [New Menu] Do you not have those?  If you have the "[Geoprocessing Tools]"  category, you can select it and then Add a script tool from a Toolbox (Note: This tripped me up at first as I wanted to add the script directly from a Python file. AFAIK, you must first add the script to a Toolbox as a tool, and then you can add it into ArcMap as a custom tool from that Toolbox.).  Once you've added that tool, you can drag its icon to a toolbar in the ArcMap interface.  If you don't like the script-y icon, you can change it by right-clicking on the icon on the toolbar and either picking one of the standard images, or browsing for one.  In any case, once you're out of Customize mode, clicking on your new button should run your script tool. Ohhhhhh.... It is at the very end!! Yeah I was going alphabetically and I just saw Geoprocessing. Yup, yup this is exactly what I encountered during beta and bingo, there's my button on ArcMap as a cat! Thank you for helping me out!  If I could give you 10 points I would. 😄 ... View more

Instead of a shapefile, I would convert it into a feature class using subtypes. Each vegetation class will be a subtype.  For example, our agency has a condominium layer (feature class) and each floor is a subtype.  We have 14 floors so 14 subtypes.  Some polygons overlap (like floors 2 and up on top of floor 1) while others do not, like only having one floor.  Some floors have a deck or balcony, so the polygons aren't always exactly on top of each other, just like your data.  You set the subtypes so that floor 3 is always on top floor 2 not floor 3 over floor 7, etc. I think this might help solve your problem.  Subtypes are easy to edit as well. Cheers! Working with Subtypes: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Working_with_subtypes/005r00000002000000/ Quick tour of subtypes: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/A_quick_tour_of_subtypes/005r00000001000000/ Creating Subtypes: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Creating_subtypes/005r00000003000000/ ... View more

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//002400000005000000.htm Where it says, "Adding a custom tool to a menu or toolbar": I don't seem to have "Geoprocessing Tools" as an option under "Categories" and I just have the "Geoprocessing" category. Even here I do not have an "Add Tools" button.  I tried adding the "Script tool wizard" but that remains unactive. I think I am confused. 😞  I think this was available in beta. ... View more

What is going on with Arc 10 and the case sensitive stuff??? This works: arcpy.Clip_management() This doesn't!!!: arcpy.clip_management() Are you telling me I'm going to have to update literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code in hundreds of scripts in order to move from arc 9.x to  Arc 10? Please tell me this isn't so? Anyone figured out a way around this? Yep it is so. When I took a python class last year, they let everyone know that this would change in 10, so I just started the habit of typing it out correctly since then.*shrugs* ... View more

This is just an observation... Isn't it kind of odd that there are three "unique" users: eaub490, rnig490 and ckel490?  Eaub490 is the only user with any posts.  The other users have zero posts and their activity ended around the same time... Again, just an observation. Here are some screen captures in case one of them decides to become active again after reading my post... :eek: ... View more

So my questions: - Will a separate Python forum remedy this situation? Will it prevent python discussions from cropping up in other forums? - Do you guys recommend posting the same question multiple times on multiple forums? - And should any and all Python related discussions go in a future Python forum? #1a: Won't remedy it, but I do think it will minimize it. #1b: No, but again, probably minimize it. #2: No, but honestly I don't really see the problem in cross posting the same thread to different forums. #3. Ideally yes. Another question in regards to your response to #3: Do you think Esri should move any and all existing python related discussions (like those currently in Map Automation, etc) to the future Python subforum? ... View more

It seems that esri is becoming more python centric. Seems like "Python Scripting" is an important "Function" and is becoming more so for many of us... Heck yeah! That's why it is found everywhere and in many forums... That is why this whole issue is tricky! Sorry, can't help myself. 😛 ... View more

Build it and they will come... 🙂 We are already here. No ... for all the reasons in the No section.  Tags need to be implemented...in a Borg system, the post could be scanned for relevant tags and the appropriate forum suggested.  Most people aren't that sentient and will continue to post in the General forum (ie field calculator Python issues) or in the GP forum. But anyway it is the posting that is the problem not the forum splits and/or aggregations. I would vote for removing any General forum altogether Honestly, all the topics are blurred or heavily interwoven together.  Python has such a far reach over so many topics that you can find python and GP discussed in multiple forums/subforums.  I am not sure if making a separate Python subforum will help. As of 10-28-10, when I check out the Map Automation subforum (not including the sticky), the first 10 out of 10 threads are python related.  I even see python discussions in the Data Models subforum, python discussions in the Geodatabase & ArcSDE subforum, GP related discussions in the API subsforums, of course some topics in the ArcGIS Desktop �?? General forum as well.  There are probably more subforums like this, but I don�??t feel like reading every one of them.  So in short, are all of those posts going to be moved to the new Python forum if it gets created? Will a new python subforum remedy this problem? Okay, so I invite you guys to go to the main page:  http://forums.arcgis.com/index.php  and pick a group, whether Extensions, Functions, etc, and just go down the list and you COULD very well write a python script for use in a majority of these topics. If I had a question about automating my Map Templates (using data driven pages) with a python script, and I want it to populate values for my edit feature templates, and have it kick off a report as well, where do I put that question? (This is something we are actually looking at but I haven�??t posted this question yet). Will I put this in Map Automation (for data driven pages), Python (because it is a python script), Map templates (can we even do this for edit templates yet?), Cartography (for edit templates, also concerns layouts and possible layout optimization), or in ArcGIS Desktop-General (because of that report element)?  And if I was having a heck of a time getting my buffer GP tool to work for my Silverlight web app, do I put that in the GP or Silverlight forum? You guys might have better examples of these types of scenarios but I think you know what I mean that basically, a question can easily cross multiple forums/subforums. So my questions: - Will a separate Python forum remedy this situation? Will it prevent python discussions from cropping up in other forums? - Do you guys recommend posting the same question multiple times on multiple forums? - And should any and all Python related discussions go in a future Python forum? As Dan mentioned above, there has to be another way�?� P.S. My vote is not just "No" for "No split, keep it the same and don't do anything about it," but "No split, we need another solution." ... View more

The more capability we see with python, the more sense to me, that it has its own category.  Python is not just GP tools, it has its own window now, which may be using tools, but I think python has moved a bit past just GP.  Less is more, is just that, maybe I should just say, Simple is better than complex, Sparse is better than dense...  Python itself could easily have more than one category, but for this I say Less is more. I'm playing with Arcpy.Mapping now and with all the new goodies in arcpy, yes Python could definitely have more than one category.  I don't know why, but I am currently thinking about the non-python users right now...  I keep thinking: If we have a separate python forum, do you think non-python users can just take a peek at what we are all talking about?  Would they even venture there or would they just stick to playing with tools and models?  I feel they might miss something, like miss a discussion that provided a much easier solution to their problems via python, and thus miss a chance to get them over to the sunnier side of GP.  Heck, if I were a non-Python user and read about the great things that other users are doing with arcpy.mapping, that alone would get me curious.  That is the same with anything else in Python (insert cool python stuff here) and it might trigger a "Hey I think that would help our organization too" or "Wow, you can do that in Python, let me check that out!"  I see positives and negatives for keeping GP together or splitting it up, so what happens now? ... View more

Keeping the GP forum as is forces (or opens up) new or current toolbox or modelbuilder users to read or glance at python related discussions.  Maybe seeing these discussions and solutions can spark some curiosity and help convert these users to using Python.  I think that would be pretty cool!  These users need to see people exclaiming how awesome python is! 😉 ... View more

Using this logic, ESRI should then only have a single forum, as that would surely maximize/consolidate posts... No, this was just an observation.  You can�??t deny that this isn�??t currently happening. While we're at it, maybe get rid of those forums that have <= 25 threads (which BTW is about 45% OF THEM!!!). See for yourself: http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/3-ArcGIS Where do you suggest they go?  What would they be lumped together as? At one point, I did want some of the forums divided into more subforums (like the old forum structure), but by reading past discussions on similar topics, I am leaning towards not splitting them and became a big supporter of enhancing/improving the search and tagging capabilities. So way back during the first few weeks of opening up the new forums to the public, Jim mentioned why Esri designed the new forums the way they did. I had to sift through some older posts, but I agree with what Jim had said.  Sorry Jim if I am not supposed to post so many of your responses, but some of them just stick out in my mind. Post from New Site Very Disappointing: What we really want to do is to design and mold the organization and functionality of the forums to generate the most input, discussions, and make it easiest and most valuable to use for most users.   It's not logical nor appropriate for us to ask everyone to change just for the sake of change, when that change makes everything more difficult.  That would be ridiculous.   But as with any system that is used by many people, we have to be careful when making changes.  Every one much be checked out to make sure that changing one thing for a few doesn't make other things more difficult for most, with special emphasis on those who actually do more contributing than consuming. >most of those people do not use search engines to find any new posts  that would fall into their field of expertise   I would agree.  I've never heard of users who do this.  And I've not even done this myself with the old forums.  The tool was too weak and not designed for that.  I went to the very specific forums that I happened to know were there, and that in effect became a built-in query filter.  That also assumes topics that should be in that specific forum are always there too, which we pretty much all know wasn't completely the case.  But again, I knew the forum landscape like the back of my hand. When it comes to volunteers who provide assistance in the forums, I'm hearing from just a few so far who consider themselves experts but only in very small niche areas of the ArcGIS system. Isn't it true (and we could be wrong) that most GIS Professionals have knowledge to share and areas of interest to learn than just one extension or set of tools? With these new coarse grained categories these folks can now go to perhaps one or two forums rather than a few, or dozens, or 50, 60, etc.? From those folks we would often hear "I don't use your forums because they're too detailed.  I don't know where to ask my question. ESRI tends to want to overconfuse things, like the forums." and others along those lines.   I'm also not hearing what your experience has been with straddle topics and misposting. The coarse grained forums also then expose users to questions and opportunities to hear about and learn about things they might not have while focused on smaller areas (not the primary reason, but another benefit we've noticed.) That said, in a significant way I'm absolutely not disagreeing with anyone in this thread.  We understand how the forums were used because we used them too, and many of us were users of ESRI stuff long before we got here to ESRI.   There are a few that have said, "if I no longer have my very specific niche forum, then if I want to browse rather than search, I need to wade through lots of topics I'm not interested in".  I get that.  I do.   But any design must be inversely analyzed too, and then implemented to fit the most common use cases.   Everyone's interested in slightly different things, and not all threads are of interest to everyone, we get that too.  In the end it will come down to data that we pull out of the system.  If they get more users, more views, more queries, more time spent around the site, answered more, queried more, then that will confirm what we're all doing.  Else it won't and we'll need to modify things immediately and as we go in order to keep this tool valuable for everyone, especially for the contributors. Quotes taken from Who wants the old forums back: Jim is responding to: Totally agree with Sean's earlier post. If your field of knowledge is in certain areas it is alot more difficult now to reply to posts and find answers too. For this one reason I have helped alot less people since the switch over. I think many would agree with that to some point.  Even for most of us here at Esri it would be tough to argue against that from that perspective.   If we had forums clearly labeled and organized by fine-grained topics like "Topology", it might make it easier for people with Topology questions to ask them, and definitely easier for people expert with topology to answer them.  Just a few things I can toss in to help explain why we didn't do it that way this time: a.  With the old forums, we did have those very fine-grained topics.  But that led to there being almost 400 of them.  It's not reasonable to expect that users should sift through forums to become familiar with what's there and what's not when there are that many.  We received many complaints about this over the years.  And that's not counting how many users perhaps didn't complain because they were too overwhelmed and just didn't use them and never came back.   And the usage data is clear that many just posted into the nearest "...-General" forum they could find so that they didn't have to hunt and peck for a specific forum that may or may not be there.   You might "think" all of the topology issues are in the topology forum, but they're not.   We had to find a middle ground between users who don't know and experts who do know.  b.  Some users with an issue that relates to the concept of Topology might not know that term yet.  Or maybe they do but don't know that the solution to their problem involves Topology. c.  If you know your issue or question relates to topology and you want to search for it before posting, if you're good with keywords and you understand what you're looking for, the search will find it, cutting across all of the forums.   That includes the product-based "Products" forums and the more workflow-based "Functions" forums. d.  Many issues using ArcGIS are more general and broad than specific categories can encompass.   This causes a lot of cross-posting, misposting, and users saying "I'm using ArcGIS, where does my question go?". So, between the search tool, broad issues, users not fully understanding the nature or solution to their problem (which is why they're here asking on the forums), seems we're better off with more general categories than specific ones.   Seems to be working well so far.  Well, except for Extensions, which is why we ended up splitting those back out. Another trade off.  What we found is that the almost 400 fine-grained specific categories in the old forums were more difficult to learn and use than necessary.  And frequent mis-posting provided an illusion that each category contained all relevant discussions when that was often enough not the case.   Not to mention topics that straddled two or more of the fine-grained categories.    We found that users would rather rely on a good search engine (both from inside or from outside our site) to find information then by learning a complex site layout and trying to navigate to it.   The categories still have enough granularity to support groups of users with similar interests. Perfect?  No.  But dealt a set of cards, we're playing the strongest ones based on user requests and usability testing. I think ESRI needs to improve the search and tagging capabilities.  So far, there isn't an overwhelming majority who want a split. ... View more

I guess a bit of clarification.  It seems that slowly but surely more forum sections are being generated, and now they want SDE broken out, so that is what I mean by old style. Fix the search, institute better tagging. Less is more. I agree with this comment. ... View more

Just to recap a little... The old style for GP were three forums:  "ArcGIS Desktop - Geoprocessing ArcToolbox" "ArcGIS Desktop - Geoprocessing Modelbuilder" "ArcGIS Desktop - Geoprocessing Scripting (Python, JavaScript, VB)" At the moment we have some support for three new ones: "Geoprocessing Tools" "Modelbuilder" "Python Scripting" ...and then seeing who else jumps on Chris' idea for a 4th: "Geoprocessing Workflows" Sounds like the same thing...  So no split. With a General GP questions category, a majority of people (mostly new users) may post model or python related questions in the general category anyway.  Lots of people ignore the different categories and add to a general category because it usually has more posts. More posts = More activity.  More activity = More people reading the threads.  And then they'd think that if more people are reading a specific forum = Most likely that someone will answer their questions. It has happened with ArcGIS Desktop-General. Cartography related questions? More people will post to ArcGIS Desktop General than the specific "Cartography" category (which can already be confusing). Map Templates? It is the same scenario. People want to post to a forum or subforum with the most activity. Okay, so let's say we did separate it out into GP Tools, GP Python, GP Model builder, and GP General?  How "general" are we talking about here?  What kind of questions could be left to post in the GP general category without mentioning a tool, script or model?  Sounds odd�?� I don't know... My 2 cents. ... View more

Great, thank you for your quick and helpful response!  We will definitely look into the APIs. Thanks again. ... View more