Latest Contributions by JohnSobetzer

Thanks Stephen for the suggestion.  What I can't seem to do is to get the toolbars to vertically display at a width of one.  I can get Advanced Editing and Cogo down to double button width, but I want one button width.  I can't get Topology down below 8 button width.  I got Layout down to one button width only by removing a bunch of buttons. ... View more

Here's some options.  Depending on your license level and how many and how big the differences are you may like one or the other. One method.  If you can convert your polygons to lines and points, then you can select the lines in BreedBlocks that need to be replaced, delete them, and copy and paste the Boundary layers lines in that area into BreedBlocks.  Extend or trim any intersecting lines as needed and/or use planarize and delete the unneeded extensions.  Then build polygons using the points for attributes. Second method(s).  If the differences are all or almost all within a small tolerance, run an Integrate.  Or create a topology using feature classes, and run a validate.  Priority is given to your Boundary layer. Third method.  Use the zipper task. Fourth method.  Use the construct features tool to first split all the BreedBlocks where they extend beyond Boundary, then delete those.  Run it again building polygons taking into account existing polygons, and then merge these newly created polys (that fill in areas between BreedBlocks and Boundary) with the appropriate abutting poly. ... View more

If the explode solution doesn't work you might try planarizing your roads. ... View more

The most likely candidate that I can think of is jpeg 2000 (JP2 commonly).  MrSid, ECW and JP2 all use wavelet compression which works well with photography and greatly reduces disk storage requirements.  Decompressing does use CPU cycles, but for many purposes only the area being displayed needs to be uncompressed, and they have built in pyramids.  ArcMap handles them all.  MrSid and ECW, however, are proprietary and require expensive encoders.  Jpeg2000 is open source and ESRI's own software can encode it.  I warn you that at least through 9.3.1, the ESRI encoding produced a JP2 file that was rather slow to display on a computer, and awful on ArcPad.  The best JP2s I've seen comes from the expensive LizardTech encoder that also does MrSid.  JP2's also supports 4 bands.  I haven't found a good free JP2 encoder. If you weren't using photos, but rasters such as the USGS topos (DRGs), then I'd suggest using tif rasters with LZW compression.  The compression is very high and the tifs very fast. ... View more

Your best hope for good advice is for Melita Kennedy to answer.  But here's some thoughts you might consider in the interim.  It would really help if you knew the coordinate system the pdf map was in.  If that isn't something you can get and you have some time to play, you might try some quickie georeferencing with your data frame in some different projections, perhaps ones commonly used in your area.  See if one seems to fit particularly well.  If there is then start afresh and use it. If your map has some obvious features spread around it, you might consider using a photo or good vector layers to attempt a georeferencing.  Road intersections, lake outlets, structures, etc. are all good candidates for control points. If when you get done you can't simple stretch and rotate your map, look at the other transformations options and see if one is better for your work than others. ... View more

The suggested workaround for the missing map series is for your brain to remember what each map's name is, and then you can type it in that little window to get the page to display.  I don't like having to remember each page name, and I don't like having to switch to the keyboard. As for suppressing pages, in addition to the clumsy query process, if your brain can remember what page numbers you want or don't want, you can type them in at the export page dialog box, as you could in mapbook.  Eg. 1-7,9-12.  I suppose you could use the snippet tool to clip an image of your map series and save it for future reference. I had hoped I could use my index layer's table as a kind of map series by resizing it to approximate the old tab after limiting the fields it would display.  It kind of works.  You can right click on a record and pan or zoom; you can select records for printing with a mouse, etc. But if you are using a clip or page definition query or dynamic text, however, the pages don't update so it's useless in that situation.  While you can use it to select pages for export that doesn't suppress pages on a persistent basis and it gets messed up with other tables that you may want to open.  (If you haven't seen how ArcGIS 10 displays tables you are in for a surprise.  If you resize your index table to tall and narrow to use as a map series tab of sorts, then all the other tables open in that same window with only a tab to switch between them.  I don't think I like this approach in general and it kind of screws up this workaround.) I have no workaround for the loss of exporting georeferenced tifs in batch. For all these reasons, there will have to be a 9.3.1 install here to run mapbooks and the zoom/export tool.  But then I still use 3x for some things.  Keep those old computers running. I wish you better luck. ... View more

You might check out the following: http://blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/mappingcenter/archive/2009/07/15/The-Buffer-Wizard-in-ArcMap.aspx. You might Google for articles like this as to differences in projections, although this one is pretty general: http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html. Related to this is http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/defenseandintelligence/archive/2010/05/24/Geodesic-features-and-measurements-in-ArGIS.aspx in case you wanted to check your results with the measure tool. ... View more

You shouldn't expect sids or jpeg2000s to be any better than ecws in terms of quality and file size.  In my experience ecws are the fastest of the three.  Converting them to tifs or bmps would produce huge jumps in file sizes.  I don't know anything about GBMs. So if you have to reduce file sizes, the only obvious solution I can see is that you will have to increase your compression and there will be some loss of quality, but it may be acceptable.  To do this, however, you need an encoder.  Sids require GeoViewer (which can also produce jp2s) and ecws above 500 MB (that is misleading its a pixel count number) need software from ERDAS.  Both are relatively expensive.  ArcGIS can produce jpeg 2000s although in my experience at least through 9.3.1 they were very slow compared to those produced by GeoViewer. ... View more

If you use a program like Irfanview (free) and save to tif. it should drop the 4th band.  It has a batch conversion function.  There may be other image viewers or editors that also have the batch function and most probably drop that 4th band. ... View more

I was lucky enough to be able to install 10 on my second computer for testing since mapbooks (and the zoom and export to georeferenced tifs tool) are so important for my work.  The DDP has some wonderful capabilities and is similar to mapbook in many ways, I've also found some limits including: 1. you lose the map series tab which I found to be very useful for moving between pages to see how they look or as a super bookmark, and for exporting single maps, 2. you lose the ability to tag a text box with a field attribute using 1-2 clicks, instead you have to insert one of the default provided dynamic texts, then open it up, then edit the html tag to point to the field you do want, and then save that all of which requires many clicks and switching to the keyboard and back, and if you make a mistake repeating it, and 3. I think you lose the option to suppress tiles and as noted in 1 to easily select only certain maps for export in a series, in favor of using a selection but selection queries require quite a few clicks and switches to the keyboard and back.  I would add it cannot export to a georeferenced tif which mapbook never did but the zoom and export tool could for Views.  If you convert an existing mapbook you will of course lose your map series and tags, and if you had chosen the clip with cross hatch option you will have to manually select one of the hatched areas and delete it.  On the plus side there are some wonderful additions.  I do have two enhancement requests in to add something like the map series tab (NIM059032) and the export to tif (NIM059031, I hope it includes georeferencing within it) but they didn't give me one for tagging text. ... View more

I'm a bit unsure of what you have done and what you need.  If you have digitized the shoreline into a shapefile or geodatabase feature class then you data that can be visually compared to your other data, and run through some of the analysis functions.  If you digitized it into graphics then you can use the Drawing - Convert graphics to features option to convert them to shapefiles or feature classes.  If you want to convert the vertices of these lines to coordinates, then you can use various tools like the Data Management Tools - Features - Feature to Point and Add XY Coordinates tools.  If you don't have ArcInfo ET Geowizards has a line to point wizard.  There may be an Arcscript to do what you want as well - check ESRI support downloads. ... View more

You might see if running an erase of your roads with the buffer gets you the info you need.  Or if you don't have the erase tool run a different overlay and query your results for areas without overlap. ... View more

If: 1) you don't want to or can't go the representation route, 2) you don't mind a performance penalty which could be almost unnoticeable, and 3) you don't mind that your line will block out any line under it,  you might make your outline a combination of two lines, one a solid line with the color you want to see and the top one a cartographic line of white color with a template pattern that when combined with the solid produces the pattern you want. ... View more

Once you have used Update Georeferencing on one of your rasters, you might be able to copy the world file (I've had few enough of them that I didn't need a script or batch copier but you can Google on "copy files multiple times" or something like that) and then use a batch file renamer to rename them to match up with your raster's names.  But if your rasters have complex names this may not work too well.  Unless you really need to rectify them I'd skip that process since it takes awhile to write the new raster, you may find it's image quality reduced or you may have to switch raster formats such as when using sids. ... View more