Latest Contributions by MichaelBranscomb

Marc, ArcGIS Explorer is primarily intended as a consuming / sharing application and therefore the local data creation abilities in the API were deliberately restricted. However - in the imminent 1500 release there are some excellent new sharing capabilities in the UI. The way to programmatically create content in ArcGIS Explorer from a source such as ADO.NET is via Notes (persisted in the map) or Graphics (NOT persisted in the map). Notes can be arranged in folders and will appear in the Contents window. If you have an ArcGIS Server 10.0 accessible then you could create a layer in a Geodatabase on the server, publish a map service with feature access enabled and edit the contents via the feature service. ArcGIS Explorer could then stream this content back via the map service (you would need to clear the local map cache after any edits to the service). You could use one of the available Shapefile libraries available on the web but I would probably only recommend this as a last resort. The File GDB API is due for release in the months after 10.0. Regards Mike ... View more

Brad, For cached and dynamic services, your map display (2D) and the service should ideally both be in the same coordinate system (e.g. British National Grid, or if overlaying with ArcGIS Online services, WGS1984 Web Merc Aux Sphere). With cached services, for best appearance, you should choose PNG8 or PNG24 (assuming your service contains largely vector data) and check the option to apply anti-aliasing. With dynamic services you should see reasonably crisp lines/text until you zoom in to very large scales. I've just done some quick tests here with a cached service using PNG24 and anti-aliasing and both dynamic and cached appear to be of similarly good quality. You may see a small amount of rasterisation of the map display due to the way in which seamless panning is provided in 2D. For advice on planning a map cache please see http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisserver/10.0/help/arcgis_server_dotnet_help/index.html#/Tips_and_best_practices_for_map_caches/009300000079000000/. Regards Mike ... View more

Ryan, A few questions: what happens if you increase the symbol size? Are you in 3D or 2D display mode? Do the symbols display differently in the other display mode (2D or 3D depending on above)? How many points are in the Shapefile? Do the symbols display OK if you zoom in? Regards Mike ... View more

Sarah, Did you try running the System Requirements Checker referenced in the earlier post? (it's currently http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/1186/10895 but this is updated each release of ArcGIS Explorer). This will report whether you system has sufficient resources to run ArcGIS Explorer. Regards Mike ... View more

Brandon, The way to obtain user interaction with the map is via the various Track... methods on the MapDisplay class. At the current 1200 release these are TrackPoint, TrackPolygon, TrackPolyline, and TrackVector. In the next release (1500) due out this summer we have added some additional Track... methods for other types of shapes. There are no generic mousedown events exposed. You can also use MapDisplay.GraphicClicked and MapDisplay.MapItemClicked (notes and KML layers only). Regards Mike ... View more

To get the map as an image you'll need to use ActiveMapDisplay.GetBitmap() which returns a BitMap of the map at the current display resolution (which for most desktops is usually 96dpi). You can use that BitMap image with PDF converters which have APIs such as PDFSharp (http://pdfsharp.com/PDFsharp/). Unfortunately at this time it is not possible to request a map image greater than the screen resolution. Regards Mike ... View more

John, If you can post the Shapefile here I'll happily try it out for you to see if there's anything obviously wrong. (Or if you can;t share your data maybe you can create an ArcView 3.X Shapefile using some ESRI tutorial data?). Regards Mike ... View more

Ethan, You might like to try using: Application.ActiveMapDisplay.Map.ChildItems.Remove(TestLayer) This works fine - as does re-adding the layer afterwards using the OpenShapefile method in your example code. Calling Disconnect() is probably unnecessary (and may be the cause of your problem - unfortunately I didn't go as far as to test this) but you can call ClearCache() if you want to explicitly clear out the disk cache. Regards Mike ... View more

Simon, There's some information on this topic in a previous forum thread (http://forums.esri.com/thread.asp?t=297883&f=2208&c=184) - here's the salient bit: "showing a dockable window programmatically is not supported - there is no access to the application framework to automate the UI - the user controls the application framework. If you want to show a form from another form, perhaps you can consider using a separate windows Form (ideally this would be a modal form as it would not be dockable as part of the application - something like the existing wizards for adding data, or the Manage Layers dialog).". Regards Mike ... View more

James, I'm not sure what level of performance you expect (or require for your application) but your results (40-80 milliseconds) look very good - running your test code I found the human eye (mine at least) is barely able to keep up with display changes at those speeds. You might find you get slightly better performance with the ESRI Imagery basemap due to differences in the way different basemap sources are cached. As you add in additional layers of data you will find those display times begin to slow down - so the previous advice regarding spatial indexes, etc is still relevant. you seem to be working in 3D which uses a WGS84 geographic coordinate system - for best performance you should consider reprojecting any data you wish to display in Explorer (in 3D) into that coordinate system. Regards Mike ... View more

Rapairing broken layers with invalid data sources (ArcSDE, ArcGIS Server, file-based, etc) has been addressed in the next release of ArcGIS Explorer - 1500 - which is due out this summer. Regards Mike ... View more

You should get equally good performance from using the Mapdisplay.ZoomTo method (with a variety of overloads) to navigating the Globe manually. We use the programmatic navigation in automated tests and see good performance there. Slow navigation is more likely to be a result of the data you are displaying in the Globe - what are the data sources? are the spatial indexes appropriate? are any services cached on the server? is there reprojection on the fly happening for anything not in WGS84? Regards Mike ... View more

Darcy, Joe is probably right - almost all display issues we have had reported have been resolved with a driver update. Generally laptops which often have an onboard/integrated/specific graphics card need updated graphics drivers from the laptop vendor whereas desktop machines often have regular graphics and will require a new driver from the grahpics card vendor. You should also check your computers specs meet the ones here: http://wikis.esri.com/wiki/display/agxpsr/ArcGIS+Explorer+System+Requirements and in particular run the system checker linked from that page. Regards Mike ... View more

Srikanth, In the Application Configuration Manager under the Custom Resources section you can uncheck the option the "Include ESRI basemaps" then add your own basemap NMF files to the Basemap gallery. You can also remove the "remove" / "manage" buttons from the bottom of the gallery via the App Config Manager. There are other alternatives, such as creating your own Gallery Add-In which which creates a new Basemap based on the item the user selects in your Gallery - this can be done via the Basemap class in ESRI.ArcGISExplorer.Mapping. Regards Mike ... View more

Jeff, Thanks - ArcPad is another product to consider... Bob - there are some great case studies at: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcpad/success-stories.html. There is also a 20 minute free evaluation (20 mins at a time - can be restarted to continue the evaluation) available at http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcpad/download.html. Regards Mike ... View more