Latest Contributions by JeffThomasILM

I have some lines that were collected with good detail from aerial imagery, following their actual position on the ground. However, I have users who don't like the "bumpiness" of the lines when zoomed out - they'd rather the lines lose some detail and look smoother. I could create generalized lines and scale ranges, but I'm wondering if there's a way to generalize lines (or polys) on the fly as you zoom out. I'm thinking specifically about web maps, but no reason it couldn't apply to desktop mapping, as well. The concept seems like a desire as old as multi-scale mapping itself! Anyone already tackle this problem? I couldn't guess whether I'm overlooking some obvious existing option or if this is too magical to exist. Thanks! ... View more

I apologize if this question has been asked & answered before, but it's hard to search for the concept.  I need to merge/dissolve features where the value in Field A for Feature 1 matches the value in Field B for Feature 2. Much like an attribute join, except they're all in the same feature class. I'd like the result to be a new feature class, leaving the original unchanged. I'm trying to figure out if this can be done with geoprocessing tools or if it will require a Python cursor. Thanks! ... View more

Is there a way to "save as" a project from ArcPy? I know there's "save" and "saveACopy" but not "saveAs". I'm trying to establish a workflow where I open a template project, customize it by running a script, then save it as a new project (and further customize it manually) without having to close the template and then open the copied project. I can "save as" manually, but not with ArcPy? ... View more

I'm trying to create a custom pop up that includes attributes from multiple layers. Based on this example, it seems like FeatureSets should be the way to do this. The problem is this requires a geometry evaluation; e.g., return any features from layer B that intersect the feature I selected on layer A. This is overly complex; all I want returned are the features (if any) from layer A or B located exactly where I clicked - plain old  popup behavior. I looked at all the geometry functions available but none of them seem to emulate a simple click. Is there a completely different way to accomplish this? Thanks! ... View more

It would be great if rectangle (and polygon, circle, ellipse) layout text elements had fitting strategies like map labels. Legends already have some control for columns and text size. The idea is for all these elements to have additional fitting strategies like abbreviations and font width compression. This would help tremendously with ensuring layouts work for all pages of a map series with dynamic text of varying lengths. This idea would help with fitting text in a single element, but a closely related idea of mine would help prevent overlap or clipping between multiple layout elements in a layout used for map series: Intelligent grouping (flow) for layout elements ... View more

I'm wondering what determines whether you can change version or refresh a data source in a map view. In one of my map views, I can refresh the data source of one SDE database connection but not another. Both databases are stored on the same SQL Server. I have read-only access to the one I can refresh, while I have write access (to FCs I own) to the database I can't refresh. I don't know if read/write access has anything to do with it, but if anything it seems backward of what I would expect. I can refresh both databases from the Catalog view, just not the map view. Regardless, I have to restart Pro to see changes made outside the project. This is related to another question I'm still working on: Joined table edits not showing on map. I'm wondering if not being able to refresh that database is related to the fact that I can't get edits to a joined table in the same db to show up in that map view until after restarting Pro. ... View more