Latest Contributions by TrishRice

I have already put all the polygons in and made each years boundary a different color. I want to show each line in a solid color. Could you explain what you're trying to do some more please?  These two statements seem to conflict, unless we have a clear idea what the problem is. ... View more

I agree that DDP is probably the way to go.  My first thought is to field join the data from your GPS files into your polygons, so that the date attribute is associated with the polygons.  But since you have many different GPS files it's not as simple as joining one file to another.  It would take getting all the GPS tracks listed in one file and each track knowing which polygon each belongs to.  That can be done a variety of ways depending on your needs. One way would be to merge the GPS tracks so they are all in one layer.  Then do a spatial join so that the tracks get an attribute field containing the ID of the polygon they are inside.  (I'm assuming that the tracks fit inside their respective polygons; if they cross the boundary it can still be done with a few more steps.)  Do a table join so that your polygon file, which is your DDP index layer, gains the attributes of the tracks and now the date field can be presented as dynamic text. Another option is to add a field to the polygons containing the path to their respective track files.  Since the file names do not change you would only have to do this part once.  Add a new field which will be populated with dates.  I'm sure Python has a way to copy/paste values from one file into another when the file path is specified.  Though like you, that kind of coding is over my head so someone else will need to assist. Both these methods require you to run the tool again when you receive new GPS files so that the date field gets updated.  Sure beats changing it by hand, though. 🙂 ... View more

What would be really useful is if the x and y offset of symbols could be controlled by attributes the same way as rotation and size.  Then people could style it based on a height attribute.  Too bad this function doesn't exist. 😞 I've approximated this in my sign maps by adjusting the vertical offset of my most common overlapping symbols such as street names and stop signs, but I still get many other overlaps. ... View more

Mapbook used to have an option to "Select tile when drawing" option on the Map Sheet Wizard. This allowed the selected item to be highlighted blue when chosen. In DDP I can get the active item to select and the map portion of the map series will generate fine but the record is not "selected"in the sense of highlighted in blue.  I use autoreated and a related table to chart data from multiple records that are related to the original seleted (chosen) active item. Since the charts are based upon "Show only selected features/records on the graph" and there is no "selected" record in the original file, the charting does not change from map to map. Is there a way to select the active item and highlight the active item? Have you looked at page definition queries? ... View more

When you click on the line to edit make sure you click 'edit vertices' before moving it around.  I must've done this a dozen times before it finally stuck in my noggin. ... View more

A scale bar is a compilation (group) of graphic elements.  If you select the scale bar and then select ungroup in the drawing menu,  you can hack and whack on it till the cows come home.  When you're done, select all the elements and group them back together. This is good to know.  After some experimenting it only seems to work on scale bars that have been converted to graphics, and therefore are no longer dynamic.  Depending on the task this may or may not be a problem. ... View more

Sounds like they want the unit to be applied to each number displayed on the scale bar instead of only at the end.  For example instead of just 50 75 100 Feet, it would be 50 Feet 75 Feet 100 Feet.  Is that right guys? ... View more

I found a workable solution: 1) Dissolve the original features on the construction project identification field. This yields two line features in the example above. 2) Buffer these features. In my example, I created a buffer 0.7 miles on both sides of the line, with round endcaps for each line. 3) Place this polygon layer on top of everything else, and symbolize it with no fill and a thin grey outline. The polygons/buffers do overlap (as I've shown below), and I haven't decided how to best address that...but for now this is a start. If I come up with something I'll post here. That's kind of funny, I was just thinking about the same buffering technique this weekend.  🙂  You beat me to it.  It certainly works though it might get cumbersome if the map needs to be updated regularly. ... View more

Thanks for the response, pmcatnip.  However, upon following your instructions, When I "go into the layer properties", there is no "labels tab".  Only "General", "Source", "Extent", "Display", and "Symbology" tabs.  When I attempt your alternate suggestion I have no button or menu "Symbol" to click on. [ATTACH=CONFIG]29540[/ATTACH] Sorry I didn't realize you were working with a raster layer.  :confused:  Maybe some scripting could populate a text box with the layer name (year) from the TOC as the animation cycles through the layers? ... View more

I had that error a couple years ago. Several members in this thread posted good suggestions. ... View more

That will work if you create a model to do the update.  The Add Join is the same, other than one operates in a model and the other is made visible in desktop.  If the model ran while the map was closed and afterward the map was open, it should open everything just fine as long as the data sources and file names had not changed. Cool, thanks.  I will give this a try. ... View more

I don't understand the suggested change.  It sounds like you want the scale to update automatically based on each feature, which is what the "data driven scale" option is for. ... View more

For Excel use the Table to Table tool to copy it into your new geodatabase, also in the Conversion toolbox and the Geodatabase toolset.  Use the Add Attribute Index tool under the Data Management toolbox in the Indexes toolset on the Join fields in both the new feature class and the table to optimize the join performance.  Use the Make Feature Layer tool on the converted shapefile feature class.  Use the Join tool with that layer as the input layer and the geodatabase table as the join source. Thanks for the detailed info.  I have a bit of a different problem and I think this might help.  Does this sound like it would work? I have a file geodatabase feature class joined with an Excel table and set up in data driven pages.  When I try to export selected records to pdf it gives an error.  The problem has something to do with the join because it works as soon as I remove the join.  I want to try your idea of importing the table to geodatabase to see if that fixes it.  I don't want to set up the join all over again each time the Excel table is updated.  So I think I would work from ArcCatalog to overwrite the join data with the same name without opening the mxd.  Sound good?  (This is in 10.0.) Also is there a difference between the add join from the toolbox, and the add join from right-clicking the layer in the TOC? ... View more

Thanks, but all the on-line ESRI help refers to ArcMap 10.2.  I only have access to 10.0, and my Editor interface looks completely different than the help examples. I have layers which do not have temporal attributes, but I have one for each year.  I can easily animate them as a group.  However, I am unable to figure out how to accomplish the simple task of animating a text object displaying the year. I used to do this all the time in ArcScene 9.X, but ArcMap 10.X seems to want to only deal with animating time attributes of layers.  My layers have no such attributes. Any assistance would be appreciated. For one, that link isn't for dynamic labels but for text elements added through the Insert menu or the Draw toolbar.  It's not the label properties and that's why it looks different. (The instructions for 10.0 look the same.) You might like to bookmark a link to the 10.0 Help library. 🙂 To make labels that are inside a marker symbol you go into the layer properties to the labels tab.  If any of the predefined shields or callout boxes will work for you then just click on Label Styles and choose one.  If you need to create your own then instead click on Symbol, then Edit Symbol, go to the Advanced Text tab, click on Text Background and properties, and choose the marker symbol you want. ... View more

I had that error a couple years ago.  Several members in this thread posted good suggestions. ... View more