Latest Contributions by RichardFairhurst

I have a soils polygon layer and  line layer.  I want to find out how many meters of the polyline falls into each polygon of the different soil types along that line.  Does anyone have any suggestions.  Any help would be appreciated. It sounds like Intersect would work to cut the line up and join it to the soils attributes in a new feature class.  You could then run a summarize attributes summary to get the total line lengths by each soil type (assuming the lines cut into multiple polygons of the same soil type).  Is that what you are trying to do? ... View more

If your features are in a geodatabase you can use the Export option that outputs to an XML Workspace Document.  The output file can be opened in Excel, manipulated and printed out.  The output lists everything in the schema, including field types, aliases, domain information, default values, etc.  Shapefiles do not have this option, but you could import them raw into a geodatabase and output it fairly easily. ... View more

When I get a notification the text seems to get set to a default of white for some reason. When I click on it and clear the notification it goes back to the normal style colour. Is anyone else experiencing this? I get this in Firefox, IE and Chrome. I get the same behavior. ... View more

Yes exactly! I am wanting the manual merge, and when I have tried it, it chunks them in a group so when I click on the lots it outlines them all together (in that teal blue) in one single click (instead of having to shift-click-shift-click to select the lots) which is good,   but then the merge option is greyed out, basically i'm just not wanting the lots and their numbers to show up on the map in this one area. Sorry everyone, this merging thing is new to me! If you are using the Editor tool selection arrow it will select any features that it touches in any selectable layer.  If more than the one editable layer you want to work on has a selection you cannot perform a merge.  Right click the layer you are editing and make it the only selectable layer or go to the Selection tab and make it the only selectable layer. If your lots are in two separate feature classes you need to copy them to the final layer where the merge will occur before you can merge them.  The editor Merge function only works within a single layer while no other layer has an active selection. See if that helps. ... View more

Did you ever find a solution for this error.  My situation is similiar, using python script from a model, and trying to run the Collect Event geoprocess.  Just upgraded to ARCGIS 10.0 SP 4. Thanks. No, I didn't find a solution that allowed me to run the Collect Events tool within a single script.  I did get two scripts to work where the first stops just prior to the Collect Events tool and the second picks up from that point.  I had to set up a few layers in the second half of the script to configure it for tools that ran later, but that was not too difficult.  I have these as Sceduled Tasks and just make sure to leave enough time between one task and the other so they do not conflict with each other.  My script was very long and justified this approach, but a short script would be hard to approach this way. ... View more

Hi all, I'm trying to write a script that automates a join and then does some reporting. I'm not very experienced with joins and I'm running into a problem. When I do a join manually (right clicking the shapefile and specifying the join) it does the join seemingly automatically. However, when I try and do a "Join Field" in ModelBuilder it takes a really long time. Minutes. Is there a different method of automating a join using python or Model Builder that runs faster? Thanks for any help. You don't want to use the Join Field tool to replicate what you are doing in ArcMap, because that tool actually physically modifies your input layer to include the fields and data in that single feature class, which is why it takes so long.  But that is not what you are doing when you right click on a layer and Join it to another layer in ArcMap, because that join is set up as a layer in memory, not phyically stored in a database.  That is why it is very fast to set up. To replicate what you are doing in ArcMap you need to use the Add Join tool.  The trick in ModelBuilder is that the first input feature class or table must be formatted as a Layer (Make Feature Layer) or a Table View (Make Table View) to initate the Join.  The second Feature Class or Table does not have to be in the form of a Layer or Table View (the thing you actually see in ArcMap), but may be read directly from disk (the thing you see in ArcCatalog). The second trick is to be sure that both the main layer and the join layer are Indexed on the common join field using the Add Attribute Index tool.  Indexed fields dramatically improves the speed of selection and calculation operations on a Joined layer. Finally, because the Add Join tool only exists in memory, you can break the Join using the Remove Join tool.  This allows you to break one Join and create another Join or act on the original layer (which is faster if you don't need the join table fields to select records or participate in calculating values). ... View more

Unfortunately, I still can't get it to work. I must be doing something wrong! Here's what I'm doing: 1. Load Tigerline county file (Census) and land disturbance file. Check they are in same projection. 2. Dissolve land_disturbance Dissolve fields: Type 3. Union: input files: land_disturbance_Dissolve, Tigerline 4. Dissolve: input files: land_disturbance_Dissolve_Union dissolve fields: Area, Type, GEOID10, NAME10 5. Check results: 508,492 acres I also tried this: Union: input: land_disturbance, Tigerline Dissolve: input: land_disturbance_Union dissolve field: Type, GEOID10, NAME10 statistics: Area (sum) 3. Check results: 542,543 acres You are getting too fancy.  You simply cannot retain Type or Area in your dissolves, because these overlap.  You need a land disturbance dissolve that has no attributes and is just a single shape with no overlapping polygons to get a true area report of land disturbance.  That is your most important statistic and will provide the baseline for comparing any other fancier output. So do these steps: 1. Load Tigerline county file (Census) and land disturbance file. Check they are in same projection. 2. Dissolve land_disturbance Dissolve fields: None 3. Union: input files: land_disturbance_Dissolve, Tigerline 4. Dissolve: input files: land_disturbance_Dissolve_Union dissolve fields: GEOID10, NAME10 5. Recalculate area of each shape using the Geometry Calculator.  Report that value. You cannot not rely on the original areas of your land disturbance layer to create summaries during the process, because the original shape areas will be added together not the cut up shape area values.  This is probably why you get widely varying results.  If you create a summary of the original areas during the process, you can compare its result to the geometry calculator results to find the shapes that were affected by overlaps. Once you get non-overlappinng shapes that show the true areas disturbed relative to the Counties, then you can worry about getting shapes that deal with overlapping types and summarizing them into a single non-overlapping shape.  For that I assume that if you had three overlapping shapes of Type A, Type B and Type C you would want them to collapse into a single shape with a field containing the list of types contained in the shape, i.e., "Type A, Type B, Type C". Retaining the type values would require a much longer multi-step process that is much more complex.  I would have to do it myself to break it out step by step, because at every step you risk multiplying the number of polygons that interconnect. Without having tested this, I would probably say you would have to Intersect the original land disturbance layer with itself first to fully cut it up at every overlapping shape boundary. The Spatial Join tool would come into play to Spatially join this output with itself using the one-to-one option to create a Summary list field output (i.e., a field containing values like "Type A, Type B, Type C"). The Spatial Join would have to use a negative intersecting buffer to avoid cross-over of attributes.  I then would probably Dissolve on the Summary list field of combined overlapping types to get back to a single non-overlapping shape for each complete overlapping Type combination.  Then Union that output with the Counties.  Finally use the geometry calculator at the end to get areas by County for all combined types with no overlapping area multiplication. Any attempt to summarize the full area of a single type and add it together with the full area of any other type that fully or partially overlaps it will give incorrect area summary results if the sums of the areas of the two types are evaluated in independent operations.  The evaluation of area is a dependent operation through out the process. ... View more

-I think you may be right about overlap in the land disturbance layer. I used the Dissolve tool, and then used the Union of the counties with the dissolved land disturbance shape. That gave me the correct area output for the *total* disturbed land - not the amount of land disturbance per county. I keep playing around with this, because I think you're onto something, but I can't make it work yet. This is the correct approach.  The final step is to Dissolve the output of the Union you described above, but this time be sure to use County Name or County FID and the Dissolved land distrubance FID as Dissolve Fields.  This should create two shapes per County, one that has a positive or 0 land disturbance FID value that represents the total disturbed land in the County and the other with a -1 or null land disturbance FID value that represents the total undisturbed land in the County.  Selecting the ones from this second Dissolve with the positive or 0 land disturbance FID values should give you the disturbed land area for each of the Counties. ... View more

Richard, thank you so much for your help. I've just followed your directions, and unfortunately, I get a very similar result to the spatial join process. Spatial join with intersect: 542,635 acres Merge, then union: 542,543 acres Original dbf: 412,435 acres Here is what I did: -Used Intersect tool to merge two feature classes together -Used Union tool: Input features: intersect1 Output Feature Class: intersect_union Probably there is a lot of overlap within your land disturbance layer and it is multiplying areas that overlap.  If just the total area of disturbance is important and not the attributes associated each individual distubance, first use the Dissolve Tool on the land disturbance polygons to really merge them into a single shape.  Then use just the Union of the couties with the single land disturbance shape.  Unless the Counties overlap each other this should result in a consitent area output. I also did not mean to use both Intersect and Union, just use one or the other.  So if you did a two step process somehow that used both tools, just do one of those tools.  You are not reporting the total area of all polyons in the Union, just those with attributes from the land disturbance layer, correct?  Make sure you first do a selection before summarizing if used the Union tool and retained portions of the Counties that are not part of the land disturbance areas. Are you positive both your County layer and your land disturbance layer are in the same Spatial Reference projection?  They must be in order to get consistent summary area results. ... View more

Hello, I am trying to sum small polygons (land disturbance) that are within larger ones (counties). Some polygons are completely within a county; others cross county boundaries. I would like to say, at the end of the day, "County X has 2,000 acres of disturbed land while County Y has 5 acres." (This is somewhat similar to this, except I am attempting to sum thousands of polygons within dozens of larger ones ). [ATTACH=CONFIG]19157[/ATTACH] Here is what I have done: -Add county layer to ArcGIS -Add land disturbance layer -Spatially join them (Analysis Tools > Overlay > Spatial Join)         Target features: counties         Join features: land disturbance layer         Join operation: one to many         Join type: Intersects I get a spreadsheet with a list of all of the polygons and their areas for each county. Some counties have 0, which is accurate. Other counties have several thousand entries, which is also accurate. The problem: The total area I come up with for land disturbance (if I sum everything by county) is greater than the total area of land disturbance in the original land-disturbance .dbf file. If "intersect" over-counts, I figured using "contains" for the join type might be accurate. However, this undercounts the amount of total land disturbance. How do I get the right amount of land disturbance per county? I would appreciate any help or advice. Thank you so much! A Spatial Join will not work, because it duplicates the entire feature.  It only overlaps shapes in memory, but outputs just the intersection of the attributes.  I think you want to use the Intersect tool.  This tool will phyically intersect the two feature classes together.  It will only output polygons that cover areas that exist in both feature classes.  The Union tool will cut the features and output the complete areas covered in both feature classes.  From there you should be able to do your summaries or dissolves. ... View more

Luke, I do appreciate your attempts at helping me, but I'm afraid you misread my questions entirely.  I will say that one of the functions I would like to bring in to my model is selecting a Projection and Modifying its measurement units.    How would I go about that in the Model Builder process? I have attached jpgs of screen shots of the functions I'm talking about.  These are quite basic questions.  Off Sys 1-4 are screen shots of the functions and stages of them that I am trying to add to the Model itself in Off Sys 5.  The Model is in the process of being built so bear with me on that end.  Go back to what I am referring to.  I just want to add functions that come with ArcCatalog, the File menu, and layers--such as Route Measure Editing of Vertices.  I might guess that I won't be able to bring these in, but at the same time it couldn't hurt to ask.  Dan B You can do the things shown in the first three screen shots in ModelBuilder, because these are geoprocessing tools.  Look at the Data Management Toolbox and the Lineaer Referencing Toolbox.  You cannot do the Route Measure Editiing in ModelBuilder directly.  This is a manual editing method available only in an ArcMap session and has no geoprocessing equivelent out of the box.  You could write a python script to manipulate the individual vertices (such as sum the lengths of each vertice segment in a polyline made up of straight line segments), but there is no variable or tool in ModelBuilder to do this directly.  Look in the Python forums for ideas on how to write such a script.  I have written vertice editing routines in VBA and .Net as an ArcMap Editor extension, but those cannot be used in ModelBuilder.  I don't have a ready made Python sample for you. ... View more

Glad I could help. 🙂 One more thing about the data frame. If you move it entirely off of the page in the layout it won't be included in the exported emf, so you won't have to have any data in it to get rid of the "label". 🙂 The reason that works is it exports the page extent regardless of what's visible if you have the option "Clip to Graphics Extent" unchecked. If you have that option checked it exports everything that is visible, whether it's inside or outside the page. Got it.  I will move the Data Frame out of the way, since that makes it easier to select and manipulate the symbols I want to change within the page boundaries without having to concern myself with the Data Frame.  Thanks. ... View more

The ArcMap based method does seem to preserve the center of the symbol where I want it without adding any unwanted artifacts when I export to emf files. I now will have to look at transfering the symbol configuration steps into ArcMap using the drawing tools, since I need to arrange the core symbols into possibhly up to 1,150 configurations (using at least 8 different arrow designs and 5 non-vehicle symbols used as singletons or in a paired combination with day/night and orientation variants).  The base symbols are reasonably simple and I should be able to import them from AI from the base emf files I have made. Thanks for making me aware of ArcMap's emf export capabilities. Just another note for anyone wanting to do this.  The Data Frame does need to contain one layer where all of the layer features are positioned outside of the bounds of the Data Frame so that they are not visible.  This is necessary to get rid of the label in the center of the empty Data Frame that says "Layers", which only disappears when the Data Frame actually contains at least one layer. ... View more