Latest Contributions by DanaNolan

How are you re-projecting? Your UTM coordinates look valid to me. ... View more

Even in my very secure environment (at work and home), I have the ability to use Windows Task Manager to set the ArcMap session priority higher; it always defaults to Normal. Access this from the Task Manager Details screen. This will last until you completely exit the software, so you can switch MXDs but still keep the higher priority. But what you are describing is a little strange. I often load empty ArcMap, then choose a project because everything starts up better that way. I don't think the "empty" map that comes up is entirely empty though, since the software is looking for your Normal template. At 10.6, mine is in my profile at AppData\Roaming\ESRI\.... So maybe try finding, then erasing or altering your Normal template.Also not signing into ArcGIS Online may help. ... View more

The link is to Tapestry, which costs extra and won't work on a lot of the forum users systems (I believe it is trying to find my zip through my nasty firewall--not going to happen). You need to find a downloadable or ArcGIS online zipcode polygon file to start with. ... View more

When we had to move to OSA, I needed to keep the DBA account for schema changes. So I have do have 2 connections and only use the DBA one when I need to. OSA links to network security, so it has the huge advantage of automatically keeping up with personnel changes. Whenever someone's Active Directory account is removed because they have left, they cannot access our enterprise data, without having to involve the server administrator. When someone new comes in, we can refer to the Active Directory privileges groups for file and database access that we want for that person. Our DBA passwords were ancient, so of no use really to protect anything. ... View more

I haven't tried this. I added topology to an enterprise dataset, gave up trying to get it to validate in a version, then did topology validation in a file geodatabase instead and replaced all the records. Your workaround sounds OK. Any changes you make to fix topology errors are edits, so they should rec and post fine. There are two issues though. If your data has a lot of errors, rules, or changes a lot, you could be re-marking a lot of exceptions. You can export your topology errors, so you can see what you marked the last time, but saved topology data does not have all the functionality of a feature class such as joins, which you could use to help determine which errors are new.  The other issue is documentation/metadata. Make sure your rules are saved out to a permanent template database and documented, so that everyone knows they exist even though they won't show in ArcCatalog for your enterprise FDS. ... View more

You have to think about the math involved here; one hint is use buffers or different sizes, probably around some line layers. ... View more

This was implemented in ArcCatalog at some point. I have used it many times in 10.4 and 10.6. ... View more

The point file may affect the polygon edits if there is Snapping to it set in the editing environment. If you can, try turning off snapping (I don't remember how to do this in 10.2).  Also, is this a Network Analyst feature? That could slow things down too. ... View more

I have a few template maps which I use for new maps. But, I have been slowly converting most of my maps that I plan to reuse to the Save All Customizations to the document setting. This is under Customize/Customize Mode/Options tab. Once you set that and save the map, it will never be affected by other templates or other maps you open up. This has prevented maps reverting to troublesome defaults, such as setting background geoprocessing on or pointing to an old or nonexistent scratch database, with out my knowing they are on. One on my major new tricks for this year. One disadvantage is that if your map develops issues requiring resetting your template, there are a few extra steps involved in doing this. ... View more

In my experience, drawing errors are due to interruptions of some kind, due sometimes to user actions such as panning too quickly, but usually due to database system time outs and other performance problems or to references in the map to fields that no longer exist. So, I would start with a reboot and a new empty map to see if you have data access issues. Also try another machine if one is available (that would have a different map template). If you are constantly getting this error with all your data, there might be something wrong with your system configuration or your ArcMap install.  ... View more

I think it is a dead end. You can create relationships with a geoprocessing tool, so that could save some typing and reduce errors if you use similar options and naming conventions for the parameters in the relationship. Just edit the Results of the tool for each feature, or build a little model. ... View more

Your annual summaries are simply not raw data, which is where database design can improve quality. What you have really is barely a database; it is a data store, yes, but it is not where you collect or QC data. It is more of a report in table form.180 ... View more

If you wanted average over years, you would simply ask for the average over each field (e.g. density). Agreed, if every year you only wanted the last three years' values, that would take a bit more work, perhaps a simple model or Python tool. If you want to symbolize from a related table you just classify by year and omit any years you don't want to see. There is also a Pivot Table capability in ArcMap now that would work with the related data but not the repeated fields. I don't think the difference in your approach is due to any one's  biology background ( I have a little but am mostly coming from a nontransactional database collection/management background). It sounds more like you are working with already summarized and clean data. Summarized data is not what database designers work with. ... View more

Having repeating fields, like your counts, is always a sign that you need another related table, if you ask a database designer. But, it depends on how you are using your data now and how you might use it in the future. I don't see the difficulty in symbolizing the data either way, but how would you compare years' data the way it is organized now? In a database, you would have to keep changing your formula to get the e.g. average of all years because of the changing number of fields. But if this data is being analyzed in a spreadsheet, this would be easily handled.   Database standards come from big transactional databases where quality requires less redundancy and data errors may be legion. Removing redundancy whenever possible is important to reduce work and improve data quality by removing the need to keep resynching files. So if you have a good handle on your data quality and workflow in Collector, that is more important than the standards. ... View more