Latest Contributions by RichardFairhurst

Hi, I've imported a file into ArcMap 10 and the shapefile consists of polygons, but there are some minor overlaps and some small gaps. Separately, i've created a new geodatabase and topology file, but I don't know how to (or if i can) apply the rules i set in my topology file to the existing shapefile. Any ideas? Thanks, Ri An actual shapefile (ending in .shp) cannot be used with topology.  It can be copy/imported into the geodatabase you have created and the data would then become a feature class of the geodatabase.  That new feature class can be configured to use the topology rules you have set up and be validated to check for topology errors. ... View more

Is there no way to solve that problem whitout a lot of programming? Isn't what you mean really:  "Is there no way to solve that problem without ME doing a lot of programming?"  You wouldn't mind if someone else did a lot of programming (ESRI, another user) if it was done right now and free.  The problem does involve programming (which is never just a little when every detail of the behavior is taken into acount) by someone, since this is not functionality that has been built into the current program.  "A lot of programming" went into creating Data Driven pages for one Data Frame, and from experience with ArcObjects, it becomes exponentially more complicated as you try to coordinate multiple Data Frames. ... View more

No that isn't it. The problem isn't in the ITEM NAME but rather in the value "John's Cabin" because ArcMap is expecting single quotes to be around the value - but in this case the apostrophe messes that all up. So far, using the double quotes in python doesn't seem to work nor does using the escape character \. I t didn't work because there was an error in the first line suggested.  It should have been: qry = """Item_Name"" = 'John''s Cabin' " The two single quotes together are SQL specific, not Python specific and that is how you include a single quote in an SQL query.  (Done it many times with an FGDB). ... View more

Don't forget the Scots!  MCDONALD will become Mcdonald, but should be McDonald.  MACRAY will become Macray, but should be MacRay.  We Scots just like to mess things up for you.  (But you have to give a pass on MACARONI to Macaroni, since were not Italian).  Of course the Irish half of me won't let you bypass all of the apostrophes, since O'HARE should become O'Hare.  Just a reminder that we are proud to be a Son of ... a Donald, Ray or Hare (or whatever else we are a Son of). ... View more

If you have an ArcInfo license you can use the Erase tool.  If you only have an ArcView licence you can use the Union tool to merge the two features so that they are cut together and have their attributes merged.  Then you can use the merged attributes to select all polygons where the attributes came from the golf course and delete them in the new feature class, or you can start an edit session on your original feature class and use the Attribute transfer tool to transfer the geometry of the union parcel with the cut out to replace the original parcel (or export the cut out shape into a new feature class or copy/paste it into the original. Your choice). ... View more

Hi! I created a table with several fields. Is it possible to change the type of number, i.e. from short integer to long integer once the field is created?! I cannot find how and where is the option to change it... thanks in advance! You can't.  (Vote for the most popular idea to do this on the Ideas site here.)  You have to create a new field and calculate over the old field values into it (best appraoch if ObjectID values cannot change) or create a new feature class, import the old schema, make the change prior to saving it, and load the data from the old feature class. ... View more

I can't get 'Calculate Geometry' to work in any of my tables since going to Arc10.  This applies to shapefiles, personal gdbs and file gdbs, in edit sessions and outside edit sessions.  I need this function constantly in my work, and filling in records one by one doesn't work for 50,000 records.  I've got Service Pack 3 loaded and an ArcInfo license.  I know my syntax is correct, I've been using this function for many years.  Did something change that I'm missing, or do I need to try to re-load Arc10 completely? The Field Calculator did change at ArcGIS 10 to no longer support VBA.  Your calculation has to be rewritten in Python to work.  The basic syntax for calculating X/Y coordinates (for points and the beginning of a line) are: !shape.firstpoint.X! !shape.firstpoint.Y! For the end of a line use: !shape.lastpoint.X! !shape.lastpoint.Y! For the centroid of a polygon, polyline or multipoint use: !shape.centroid.X! !shape.centroid.Y! See my response to this thread for other common field calculator python geometry expressions. ... View more

ArcGIS 10 supports all of the common field calculator geometry expressions in Python as simple expressions (no advanced calculations necessary, unlike VBA).  Here they are: Area !shape.area! Perimeter !shape.length! (for polygons length returns the perimeter length) Length !shape.length! (for polylines length returns the line length) X-coordinate of a point !shape.firstpoint.X! Y-coordinate of a point !shape.firstpoint.Y! X-coordinate of a polygon centroid !shape.centroid.X! (works for polyline too, but is not necessarily the midpoint, see midpoint/truecentroid below) Y-coordinate of a polygon centroid !shape.centroid.Y! (works for polyline too, but is not necessarily the midpoint, see midpoint/truecentroid below) To add the z-value of the start point of a polyline !shape.firstpoint.Z! To add the z-value of the end point of a polyline !shape.lastpoint.Z! To add the z-value of the mid point of a polyline !shape.truecentroid.Z! All of the above calculations can get the X, Y, Z and M values of a geometry (if Z and M are enabled) by substituting the appropriate letter at the end of any of the expressions that return a coordinate. Using the expression pattern below units can be converted in one expression to any of the following units for area:  ACRES | ARES | HECTARES | SQUARECENTIMETERS | SQUAREDECIMETERS | SQUAREINCHES | SQUAREFEET | SQUAREKILOMETERS | SQUAREMETERS | SQUAREMILES | SQUAREMILLIMETERS | SQUAREYARDS | SQUAREMAPUNITS | UNKNOWN (do not use with geographic coordinate systems that use angular units as the results will be questionable) !shape.area@squarekilometers! Using the expression pattern below units can be converted in one expression to any of the following units for length:  CENTIMETERS | DECIMALDEGREES | DECIMETERS | FEET | INCHES | KILOMETERS | METERS | MILES | MILLIMETERS | NAUTICALMILES | POINTS | UNKNOWN | YARDS (geodesic conversions occur for geographic coordinate systems that use angular units) !shape.length@kilometers! See the Working with geometry in Python help for calculating other geometry properties, such as extent, hullRectangle, isMultipart, partCount, pointCount, labelPoint, and type. ... View more

Richard,   It works now!  Thank you so much for your consulting help these last few months!  I have been struggling with this project in my free time and it finally works!  Its down to about 5% errors instead of 40%. While you cannot mark this thread as answered, since you did not start it and it began before the new forum options existed, you can assign one or more of my answers with points.  That will help my MVP standing and guide others to the parts of this thread that were most useful to you.  Glad I could help. By the way, what kinds of errors still exist?  I assume they are things like someone describing an intersection that does not exist or is not included in your network, or that they misspelled one or more street names, or that they said to go west of an intersection that is at the west end of the road, or they said go 400 feet westerly of an intersection that is only 300 feet from the west end of the road, or that they used an intersection name pair that exists in two places and the join picked the wrong one, etc.  Basically, is the error due to human error, inaccuracy and ambiguity?  That is a never ending complication of data collection. The other note is that this system will work for other kinds of data.  For example, traffic counts, traffic signals, and traffic signs work as points if described relative to a single intersection.  Pavement conditions of road segments, road construction and improvement projects, and speed limit zones work as lines if you have limit descriptions relative to the two ends.  I have created all of these and more with my system.  I hope you have similar success as you master this approach. ... View more

Actually now that I think about it I don't create the pairs first.  I run the Locate Features operation on a single point with the names in alphabetical order.  It then creates 3 events at the intersection you mention with three different primary names and three different measures.  Then I go through a set of queries and appends to match the primary street and its measure and create the pairs with the two secondary streets.  It takes only 3 query and append operation if there are any cases of 4 different street names coming together at a single intersection (those 3 appends of 4 records each generate the 12 unique combinations that occur at 4 name intersections).  My approach just means I create fewer records and no wasted records as opposed to your method (which is significant, since the Locate Features operation takes a long time with 90K intersections), but either approach can get to the same outcome. 5,720 records is nothing.  I can deal with that in two days tops once I find a logical pattern.  (I have visually inspected 7,000 records out of 20,000 in the last two days to validate an automated conflation of one line set with another and made correcting edits to about 10%) ... View more

Richard, I'm doing mine a little differently, I don't have From and To lines, everything is point based.  Here is my issue.  I created multiple points at each intersection with every possible combination of street names.  For example if I have 3 streets coming together my intersection would be made up of 6 points.  That way no matter how my primary and secondary street is written, it will join to this intersection and get this XY.  I perform the join then calculate the measures into my event table.  Then I add or subtract their distances from the intersection from those measures.  FULTON ST_HARTNELL ST FULTON ST_PICKWICK DR PICKWICK DR_FULTON ST PICKWICK DR_HARTNELL ST HARTNELL ST_PICKWICK DR HARTNELL ST_FULTON ST The problem is when I go to �??locate features along route�?� it doesn�??t know which measurement to apply to which point.  I uncheck "Keep only the closest route location" So my output looks like this�?� [ATTACH=CONFIG]11654[/ATTACH] This won�??t work.  The street name on the left in the "Concan" field is the Primary Street and needs to match the RID, so Fulton and Hartnell should be at 450.9697 ft.  The problem is that it may join to my table with 0 or 1977.0115.  So I have to go through 5720 records to clean up the whole city.  This will take weeks! No it won't take weeks.  It will take two minutes.  If this is in a File Geodatabase write a query that reads: "Concan" Like CONCAT("RID", '_%') That will select your primary street.  Now export that set.  It should be what you want.  I have to do this also, but it takes only little time and I don't care if the computer works for its living. You should not use underscore "_" as your separator, since it is the single character wildcard in file geodatabases.  I am not sure how to write a query on a file geodatabase that takes that character as a literal value in a LIKE statement.  Don't use parenthesis "()" (used by all languages), straight brackets "[]" (Field Calculator field delimiter and sometimes SQL character sets), percent "%" (File geodatabase multi-character wildcard), ampersand "&" (VB Script Concatenator), star "*" (Access multi-character widcard) or question mark "?" (Access single-character wildcard), for the same reasons in that these are special characters in SQL or the field calculator and confuse the join and/or the route event layer, or make it hard to write query logic.  The above will be confused if you had two streets that are only different in the characters that follow the shorter name.  It may occur rarely in a City, but it might happen (in a County or State it occurs too often).  A comma would be a better sperator and would would in that special case with: "Concan" Like CONCAT("RID", ',%') That is why I use curly brackets "{}".  They aren't special characters used in SQL or anywhere else and do not confuse queries, break joins or fail for event layer creation.  For me to do a similar query that will not be confused if two streets are only different in the characters that follow the shorter name I do: "Concan" Like CONCAT(CONCAT('{', "RID"), '}%') ... View more

Richard,   How do you calculate the values of from and to?  It seems like the LR route information is embedded in the line and only works with the identify tool. You use a Python calculation.  For the From measure it is:   !shape.firstpoint.M!   And for the To measure it is:  !shape.lastpoint.M! ... View more

I would like to use a similar method for locations along a corridor that I need the 3d length for. Before I was able to simply use the 2d length, but recently I have learned that I will need to get the 3d length values where the corridor sections intersect the centerline.  The method I was using was relatively simple and is shown below. 1. I would cut the polygon based on locations where methodology changed.  2. I would run the Locate Features Along Route tool. 3. I would join the resulting table with the polygon layer with the input OID. 4. Calculate the mileage for the from and to mileposts for the new polygons. Is there a way to use the 3d length of the route as opposed to the 2d length? Thanks for any help! LTK If your Routes already have Z values and you have ArcGIS 10 then you can use the Add-In I built to assign Route measures using the 3D lengths of the lines.  Your Routes must be using a Projected Coordinate System with XY values in linear units (i.e., feet, miles, meters, kilometers, etc). If your Routes do not have Z values and you use one of the 3D Analyst methods to add Z values to the Routes those tools will not output M enabled lines.  I just create a template feature class that includes XYZM and load the features from the 3D Analyst tool output.  My tool will assign the M values in an edit session even if they are all NAN to begin with.  It can change Routes back and forth between 2D and 3D lengths if you like and has similar options as the Create Route tool (ignore or measure gaps, add a starting offset value, use a multiplier to convert measure units, etc.) and can work on all features or just a feature selection. ... View more

I make no effort to make the hyperlink field human readable or displayable.  I use other fields as my display field for the identify tool, so I don't care what the hyperlink is (I never use the hyperlink tool, just identify).  I would suggest that is how you should view that field.  I do not use drive letters at all or relative paths.  I use the UNC //agency/agencydfs/ for my files which is a domain file server domain name that has been set up by my IT department.  It can point anywhere that my IT department wants (multiple servers are accessed with that same UNC prefix and are distinguished by whatever the next portion of the path is named).  Virtually everyone in my domain can see the information from the dfs (IT can restrict permissions if needed) and IT is free to move the pointer from server to server as they want without breaking my links as long as they preserve the directory structure below the pointer.  It is very convenient and I do not distribute the hyperlink material normally (for the few people outside my domain I just have them use the Field Calculator and a replace operation to alter the path, but most of them are getting access to the domain to avoid information latency and portable harddisk sharing). ... View more

Since vb is being dropped at v 10.1, will text formatting such as vbnewline be replaced by "\n" as in python? Can both be used? Sorry if this is the wrong place, but I'm not a beta user. Thank you. As far as I know VB Script is not being dropped for labelling or the field calculator at 10.1 and is already implemented at 10.  VBA scripts area being restricted to read only at 10.1 and has been dropped from the Field Calculator at 10.  vbnewline in a label is compatible with VB Script and will continue to work.  Python does not work for labels, but does work for the Field Calculator. ... View more