Latest Contributions by MatthewDuffy

In my original post Fishnet An Irregular Shape While Specifying The Number Of Divisions? I reviewed the Fishnet tool and how I used it in order to split a handicap little league outfield into fifteen thousand equal areas. I would like to see this tool further developed to allow the user (me) to either 1-enter in the irregularly shaped polygon feature to be split (on the feature boundary and not the feature extent) and (2- enter an acceptable range of 'equal' areas or 3- enter how many areas the user would like the irregular shape roughly split into).  This could probably be done in Python or more conveniently as an idea for a software revision request. Anyway, the plan that was prepared and shown in my previous blog post was executed as presented, and was used to commemorate the lives of fifteen thousand soldiers from New Jersey.  See the following links and attachments to view the final result. http://video.foxnews.com/v/4253889699001/touching-tribute-to-nations-fallen-heroes/?playlist_id=2114913880001#sp=show-clips https://www.facebook.com/deanna.crawfordbraun/videos/10206864398306323/?pnref=story https://www.facebook.com/SkyExposure/videos/1437076446596811/ ... View more

I looked around briefly this morning and was trying to determine how to get the class two bare earth point locations, for a specific area, into a point feature class (from QT Modeler to my project file geodatabase).  My goal for this part of the project is to symbolize spot elevations based on elevations taken from the las file. From within QT Modeler I used the Z-poly tool to first define my area of interest and then right-clicked to access the 'Export Point' menu. After activating the 3D Analyst extension, I was able to execute the 'ASCII 3D to Feature Class' tool and specified the feature class and input projection and coordinate system at the bottom This gave me a Z enabled point feature class that contained 15816 point features In order to symbolize by elevation, I will need the implicit Z values to be stored explicitly in the table. 'Add Z Information' tool menu: Now I have all that I need for this aspect of the project, but its a dog and draws like a slow moving beast.  In order to reduce the high level of redraw torture time, 'Dissolve': Now my redraw time is a snap and I have all that I need for this aspect of the elevation project requirements. ... View more

A local handicap children's baseball league is celebrating Memorial Day by covering their outfield with fifteen thousand flags (small ~4" American Flags on a wooden stick). They requested that I devise a placement plan that maps each flagposts placement location.  I remembered the fishnet command and searched around the community forums to see if there was a better way, as I have not attempted this in quite some time. The fishnet command is a tool that currently resides in Data Mgmt Tools>Feature Class>Create Fishnet.  When you run it, it gives you the option to use an extent template, but it uses the feature layer's extent and not feature boundary. CreateFishNet1.PNG When you run the command, you see that you are basically left to adjust the rows and columns until you get to a point where you are successful in attaining the appropriate number of equally divided areas, over only the outfield (irregularly shaped area). CreateFishNet2.PNG and CreateFishNet3.PNG I ran this tool eight times before achieving the desired amount of area divisions, but it still wasn't exact.  I would like a tool that would run this process and allow me to select the shape feature to divide and the number of divisions (here 15,000). Even if I built a tool for this, I do not believe that I will be able to specify the number of divisions desired and will only get so close. I wonder if there is a tool set I'm missing?  When I researched this issue in the forums, it seemed like maybe the Parcel Fabric Toolset would sort of do something similar to this, but not exactly.  This is my first blog post and I am not sure if this is only for me or for the general user community.  If it is the later, I'd love to hear any suggestions regarding how to divide an irregular shape divided into a specified number of equal areas. ... View more

I would like to symbolize dynamically using a Date field and am having trouble. ArcPad will not differentiate on the date field, but it works for other attributes. The layer that is employed is a file geodatabase feature class. I think it may have worked with the date field for symbolization when it was in shapefile format, but now it is not working as a feature class. It only draws the points for Northfield, but does not observe the date field parameter. However, it looks good with ArcMap. Here is an example of some of the definition querries I've attempted: [MUN] = 'NORTHFIELD' AND [DATE_] IS NOT NULL [MUN] = 'NORTHFIELD' AND [DATE_] IS NULL Should I not be using [] brackets or something? These work well in ArcMap but do not translate into ArcPad and what I end up getting is two layers that draw all of the points only within Northfield. Within ArcMap, when the [DATE_] field has a date entered, the point feature turns red, all points are drawn twice in ArcPad. ... View more