Latest Contributions by RichardFairhurst

Thanks Richard. Sounds like the problem is resulting because of the join. When you say I should export the joined table, can you give me a little more advice on what format I should export it to, and where I should store it? Should I export it as a new lyr file and put it in the same map? I'll give this a try this afternoon and see if it works. I like file geodatabase feature classes the best.  Create a File Geodatabase and export the shapefile into the file geodatabase as a new feature class.  When it finishes you will be asked if you want the feature class added to the map.  Click the button to add it, and it will become a new layer.  Shapefiles limit the field names length to 10 characters, which I believe causes a problem when you export with a join, since I think all of the field names get changed to the table names during the export.  File geodatabases don't have that problem. All of the fields of the new feature class will be editable, since they will no longer be just a join, but an actual part of the feature class.  Joined tables are never editable through the join, only the primary table/shapefile/feature class they are joined to is editable. The problem with using Excel file directly in ArcMap is that most things you do in ArcMap require that a table or feature class must have an ObjectID on every row.  Excel files do not support ObjectID fields, and as a result they usually don't behave when trying to do record selections and editing if they are used directly. ... View more

Background- I study seagrass in an estuary near Fort Myers, Florida. A colleague sends me a .shp file which contains a list of named points and their coordinates. I upload the points to my handheld GPS, navigate to them, and record characteristics of the seagrass (density, height, etc.) at each point. I enter those data into an excel spreadsheet. I intended to turn my excel tables into map layers using the import XY data function. Try as I might to specify the correct coordinate and projection systems, my points invariably ended up clustered into a pinhead sized area hundreds of miles south of their real location. Finally I was able to get my data in the right places not by creating a new layer from the excel sheet, but by joining the excel data to the correctly projected points in the empty .shp file that my colleague had sent me earlier. Now I am quality-checking the data and finding a few small mistakes in the attribute tables that I need to fix. I wish I could just click on a cell in the attribute table and type in the correct value, but apparently it's not that easy. Here's what I'm trying to do now, and what is happening: 1. I open my map. 2. I click "Editor toolbar" 3. I select "Start Editing" from the editor drop-down menu. I get a start editing window that says, "This map contains data from more than one database or folder. Please choose the layer or workspace to edit." 4. I Choose "MAY_2013_Quadzilla_PTS" which is one of the points layers I made by joining my data to my coordinates. I hit "OK" 5. I hit the "Attributes" icon on the Editor toolbar. A little window pops up on the side of the screen but it's empty. Nothing happens when I click the buttons in that window, so I close it. 6. I right click on "MAY_2013_Quadzilla_PTS" in the table of contents to open up the attribute table. I click on the cells in the table that I want to change and I start typing. Nothing happens. 7. I select the column with the data and I want to change. I pick "find and replace" from the table menu. I tell it to find "0" and replace it with "bare" because that's one of the changes I want to make. It says, "no records found." However, if I try to just "find" instead of replace a "0" it has no trouble finding a "0." 8. I get frustrated and go online here to ask for help. If y'all have any tips for making changes to attribute tables in ArcGIS 10.1, let me know. Thanks, James Import the excel spreadsheet into a file geodatabase first.  Join the table to the points and then Export the points from the table of contents.  Edit the new points.  Should work without a problem from that point.  You can even rename the fields with a file geodatabase with 10.1 to get rid of the table names from the fields. I never use Excel spreadsheets directly in ArcMap.  Nothing but problems result when I do. ... View more

Hmm, If I am going do that, I might as well write my own editor, this is getting very complicated for a simple problem.  The problem is I have a featureclass that I want to only allow edit to two or three fields, all attribute fields.  Users need to see the shape but I don't want them messing with them.  The feature class also contains lat/lon of the shape centroid but that is read only.  The name of the shape is read-only too.  Only one value is read-write and another which flags a change has a occured, then maybe the date the change occured and the user.  Archive featureclass are actually a good candidate for this but I need to restrict the user's edits.  I can write a featureclass extension to abort any edit on the other fields but that is not really what I want to do, I want to prevent them from making the change before they even try to do it.  What I really want to do is grant permissions per field.  The join to standalone was a work-around.  The creation of the event layer is a work-around to the work-around...  I will try it out though, Maybe if I join the feature class to the table...  Means I will have two layers in an opposite join configuration... Nothing you are saying above could possibly have been known from your original post.  My answer is actually fairly straight forward and answers your original question.  It is no where near as complicated as writing your own editor, but you are welcome to do that if you have requirements that are not going to fit with the normal design of ArcMap.  It sounds like you should design this for a much more restricted environment that the full ArcMap application anyway and uninstall ArcMap from these users, since with the full application you will be spending all of your coding time trying to block things and these people are not actual ArcMap users if they want this much customization. ... View more

Can I use the attributes window to edit one or many rows selected either in the join layer or directly from the table The answer to both questions is no.  The joined table cannot ever be edited and the StandAlone Table cannot be seen in the Attribute window as long as it is a StandAlone table.  However, there is a trick that will make the StandAlone Table itself into an in memory feature class and visible in the Attribute window.  Use the Make XY Event table on the StandAlone Table to make it into an in memory point layer.  The XY values can be from any numeric field and can be 0 or random (if you make their symbol invisible), or the XY of the related feature class's centriod (if you want them visible in a position related to the actual features), as long as they come from a numeric field in your StandAlone table.  As long as you select the records in the XY event layer, they will appear in the Attributed window. The edits in the XY Event layer are actually edits to the StandAlone table itself, so there is no need to code any data transfers.  Joins can be to the original StandAlone table and you can use a relate from the selections in the XY Event table to transfer selections to the joined features.  Edits appear in the joined features as soon as you leave the field you are editing in the XY Event Table's Attribute window. ... View more

No, we're not deprecating ArcObjects. We're just creating new ways to program against ArcGIS. See the "Developers" section of Jack Dangermond's Q&A from last year's user conference: http://events.esri.com/uc/QandA/index.cfm?ConferenceID=AC1DD535-1422-2418-7F1722E62B9B416A#448 I read the link items.  It does not really explain how a Developer would access the Description of a StandAloneTable, as this thread requested, using any new way to program against ArcGIS.  If it is intentionally excluded from the ArcObject SDK, where else might a Developer discover the new way to program against ArcGIS where he could gain access to control this behavior programatically?  If new functionality will simply not be exposed to the Developer anywhere, the links you provided and your explanation above do not lead me to expect that ESRI would adopt that approach. ... View more

Sorry, but most new functionality (descriptions were added to standalone tables in 10.0) is not put into ArcObjects by design. That is ominously even worse news than the first.  Is ArcObjects going to be deprecated or downgraded for external users from this point forward?  What is the programming platform game plan going forward?  I certainly need more UI control than I can get through Python or the manual UI. ... View more

Thanks for your help.  I was able to build the process in Model Builder and integrate it with my data export model. Please mark the post that answered your question to close this thread and award points if a post was helpful. See the tag line of my post for guidance. ... View more

I need to create a series of points on a polyline.  My polyline has a start and end point and I have distances for points along that line that I need to plot.  My polyline is 250 m long and I have points with distances from 0-250m on the polyline.  The distances of the points are uneven from the start of the polyline.  Does anyone know how to do this or if there is a script to tell ARC to create points on a line based on the location? If the point locates all have to be inputted manually anyway, because they do not follow a standard pattern, then linear referencing seems the way to go.  Use the Create Route tool on your line to assign measures based on your line length.  Then create a table that contains one field for the line ID value (repeated for every record associated with that line) and a second double field for each measure location.  Right click the table and make it an Route Event Table.  If all the records were already entered they will plot on the line.  You could watch new records plot on the line as soon as both the Line ID and measure value are posted for e new record.  To insert a new location, just insert a new record with a Line ID and measure.  If the position data is in Excel, the spreadsheet may work directly as an Event table already as long as you add a column for the Line ID. If it followed a simple pattern other methods would be more efficient, like repeating the split tool or some Python scripts. ... View more

Sorry to say that I could not make the solution! 😞 I read and practiced from the link you have provided but I cannot do this by my shape files. Actually im a beginner user of GIS! I tried many times but I could not! So could u please show me the way in detail?? I am stuck in this problem and my analysis of thesis is absolutely stopped!! 😞  so pleaseeee help me 😞 I do not use the Network Analyst extension myself, I just am familiar with what it can do.  You should repost your problem in the Network Analyst forum to get help from actual users of the extension.  As far as I know, nothing other than Network Analyst can solve your problem. ... View more

Last night I was working on a polygon shapefile, I was using the freehand tool to draw them. Whenever I would finish a polygon It would save as several (but not too many at all) straight lines. I never saved the MXD file. Today I created a new one, with the same shapefiles, but whenever I create a polygon with the freehand tool, it does it as bezier curves wich later turn to straight lines (this time a whole lot of them). How can I go back? Shapefiles are incapable of saving anything except straight line segments, so all curves are converted to small straight lines.  You must convert your polygon shapefile to a polygon feature class in a geodatabase if you are trying to save bezier curves.  According to the freehand help, bezier curves are always automatically created by the freehand tool to smooth curves, but when saved as a shapefile the curve will always break up into small line segments that meet the tolerance setting of the shapefile.  You may have been doing streaming instead when you created the previous drawing.  With streaming you can set options determining the interval distance for vertices to draw. ... View more

I eventually ran the same procedure for each state and it worked - not sure what was the problem. The data is sensitive, but I will see if I can provide it so that you can test it yourself. Thanks again. Hayk Whatever works is ultimately what matters.  I would say you should check it out with technical support if you want to pursue it, since I have not encountered your problem before and they may have. ... View more

Arcgis 10. Can i append selected data from one data base directly to another without exporting it? That is select and append straight to another. Edit:  Reread the post and realized I missed the statement about selecting records.  What is it you want to end up with?  A new feature class or records appended to an existing feature class?  Are you trying to preserve ObjectID?  (You can't for a selection set).  What do you consider direct that export does not do? ... View more