Latest Contributions by JohnSobetzer

It looks like it is displaying field formats but I've also seen that it is reporting field constraints of a dbf.  In any case I ignore it and they don't show up when the saved dbf is later opened in ArcMap or Excel. ... View more

I believe there may be a cloud version as there is with Microsoft Office and Google Docs, but they would run through your browser.  The standard desktop install of Libre Office, like the classic Microsoft Office, is not cloud based. ... View more

I use Libre Office at home.  Open Office is similar.  Their spreadsheet programs both save to dbf unlike the newer Excel. ... View more

You could use the Like operator and wildcards to create a selection or definition query that limits what gets displayed.  For instance "Your field name" LIKE '%0' on a text field of contour values (you may have to add a text field and use the calculator to copy the number values into it) will give you all contours that end in 0.  "Your field name" LIKE '%0' or "Your field name" LIKE '%5' will give you all contours that end in 0 or 5.  If you use it in a definition query then only those lines will show.  If you use it in a selection query you can create a layer in your project that will only contain those contours or you could export to a new dataset. ... View more

It's your call whether or not a particular scale or scales works for you.  Try them out.  You can go around manually through the layout extents and decide what scales to use.  Then you can specify that scale in a field in the index layer and in the DDP setup box select that field. Another approach would have you go to each "Map" and adjust the layout scale to what you like best, and then bookmark it.  Later you can convert the bookmarks to polygons for your index layer.  Alternately at each one layout extent you can use the following add in: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=a9b032f739254ebeb6221c9294ebc886 to add a polygon to your index layer.  Another alternative is to use python to set the extents.  See http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s300000060000000. Using any of the foregoing you may want to look at your reference scale setting for your data frame, so that you can get the symbology to display as you like. Then run the DDP and see if you like it.  The great thing about using it to export to pdf, is it runs without you and you can go back and make some changes, and redo it. ... View more

If you use Data Driven Pages, then you can have a field in your index layer that has the figure # in it matching each extent.  Then you insert a dynamic text box that uses that attribute field to fill in the text.  See http://support.esri.com/fr/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/40291 ... View more

A simple workaround is to move the endpoint beyond the snapping & sticky move tolerances,  then move it back within the snapping tolerance of the other line.  There is a snapping tolerance issue and a sticky move tolerance issue, (not to mention the feature topology tolerance) which is why zooming in is another solution, because you probably have your tolerances set in pixels.  You could reduce the pixel size of your tolerances to change the snapping behavior at any particular scale.  If you hit the T key you should see the snapping tolerance zone. ... View more

You might check your DDP setup, specifically the spatial reference drop down.  If you are using it and it is referencing the proper field, then you might check the values in the index dataset. ... View more

If you can go to View - Data Frame Properties - Annotation Groups and uncheck what is there (likely Default) and have your symbols disappear, then you know that you converted them to graphics.  At that point you can leave the layer unchecked on this tab, or go in and use the select arrow to draw a box around all the symbols and get rid of them.  Or you could try the latter first on individual symbols and if you can delete them that way then either use a select box or turn off the annotation. ... View more

Interesting thread on ESRI Forum participation; it deserves it's own thread. As for the awful and wonderful trace tool, here's some suggestions when you have problems. 1. As noted, use classic snapping. 2. If you have a lot of features that the trace tool can switch to, turn off those you don't need.  This also gets rid of their vertices when starting the snap. 3. Watch your snapping tolerance.  It typically is in pixels, and hence how fine grained your screen and zoom in scale are for the work at hand matters every time you click/touch. 4. Zoom in to keep the line from jumping features; you can use the < and > to zoom back and forth without having to change your tool.  If you have to switch to the pan or zoom, you have to re-click the tool to get it back to work.  See 7 too on this. 5. If the lines or edges you trace have gaps, even at a fine scale, that may cause the tool to fail.  It seems odd but sometimes the trace tool will jump gaps, and it always seems to be to another feature when it does that, but never in the one you are tracing. 6. Whether it is a real gap or not, sometimes you have to switch to the straight segment, click/touch, and then restart the trace even if you didn't really create a straight line segment. 7. If you are tracing features with a very large number of vertices the trace tool can slow down; it requires a fair amount of processing, so your computer matters.  A series of traces zoomed in might work.  By that I mean you zoom in, run your trace to cover part of your work, click/touch to stop, pan, click/touch to restart (and get a fresh cache? of the vertices, and then keep doing this until finished. 8. Sometimes other tools just work better.   If you have ArcGIS Advanced/ArcInfo the Construct Features taking into account existing features, or the split tool, work great.  If you have lines to match, a simple copy and paste may be in order. 9. If you are using the trace tool you are using it as part of another tool like autocomplete, and there are known issues with it in some versions of ArcMap. ... View more

If most of the required vertices moves are rather small, you could use the Integrate tool or the topology validation process to snap vertices together.  If you do either use copies (or make backups), or apply them in an edit session, since they change the input layer.  You may have to play around with the tolerance setting to see what "snaps" most of the vertices together without unacceptably changing shapes. The same can be said for the Snap editing tool. If the foregoing can get a lot of the work done but you still have some manual cleanup there is an align to shape tool on the Advanced Editing toolbar. Another possible approach with gaps and overlaps larger than an acceptable tolerance would be to clean your layer, so that all overlaps and gaps become polygons, and then run an Eliminate selecting these polygons perhaps by size, but filled gaps could be selected by their lack of attributes), and then running the tool.  There is no pure clean tool for shapefiles or geodatabase feature classes as there is for coverages, but if you have ArcGIS Advanced you could convert to lines and points and then build polygons from lines and points, or convert to a coverage.  ETGeowizards has a polygon clean tool with the option to create points wherever there are overlaps, but I think it is one of the paid tools. ... View more

Since I don't know what you are doing, I'll give you a couple of links. If you want to show the same extent and turn layers on or off, or show different attributes of the same layer this link might give you guidance: http://www.faculty.sfasu.edu/zhangy2/download/Using%20ArcPy%20to%20Automate%20Making%20Thematic.pdf Here's another link with python showing one how to make a thematic map.  It is part way down, and while it does include zooming to a location before turning layers off and on, that zoom section could be dropped.  http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2010/12/14/combining-data-driven-pages-with-python-and-arcpy-mapping/ A simple DDP approach to using the same extent is to have the index layer consist of multiple polygons that are spatial matches of each other, as in creating one and then copying and pasting in others. ... View more

I haven't tried the Multiple Layout Manager yet but it looks promising if it works in your version of ArcMap.  See http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=0ba4fd37e2e54f65b3edf6478e8cc30a I've have used the DDP's ability to insert pictures dynamically to move layout items around, even using one DDP project to produce jpg maps that were then inserted as pictures into the main DDP.  See http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/index.html#//00s900000022000000 In many of my DDP projects I have only one or two maps that need to have the legend and/or location data frame moved, and I do that by going to that page and manually selecting the entire legend and/or dataframe and using the Properties - Size & Position tab to quickly move them to where they need to go. For more ideas you might look at this: http://gis.stackexchange.com/tags/data-driven-pages/hot ... View more

If you set a geodatabase topology, you can give priority to one layer over others when vertices need to be moved.  I would use copies just in case, or do the validation in an edit session so they can be reversed if the priority isn't followed as you want.  ET Geowizards has a global snap wizard that may do what you want, but I believe that is one of the paid tools. ... View more