Latest Contributions by ChrisMathers

Bart, Those are methods of the arcpy.mapping class. Its actually very easy once you read over the docs. http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Geoprocessing_scripts_for_map_document_management_and_output/00s300000032000000/ ... View more

No there isnt a delete option so that problems, even if they are self resolved can help others. By the way if you arent making a change to your field map and just leaving it as the default, you could have just used "#" as that patameter. No need to create that object, add in two tables and then use the object as the parameter. ... View more

I meant by "geo" that while a great deal of data reflects or is generated by processes that deal with the spatial aspect of the data, many functions do not. They rely on the table alone and can ignore the spatial portion. I dont consider that geoprocessing, simply processing. I separate arcpy.mapping from the rest of GP because it does not alter your data or return quantitative data. That module is intended to control design and export of page layouts. It is map automation not analysis automation. Im sorry I brought it up. This thread isnt to discuss the pedantics of what is and isnt GP, it is to decide if Python is an encompassing enough focus of esri product users to warrent a specific forum on the subject. ... View more

Okay, so I invite you guys to go to the main page: http://forums.arcgis.com/index.php and pick a group, whether Extensions, Functions, etc, and just go down the list and you COULD very well write a python script for use in a majority of these topics. If I had a question about automating my Map Templates (using data driven pages) with a python script, and I want it to populate values for my edit feature templates, and have it kick off a report as well, where do I put that question? (This is something we are actually looking at but I haven�??t posted this question yet). Will I put this in Map Automation (for data driven pages), Python (because it is a python script), Map templates (can we even do this for edit templates yet?), Cartography (for edit templates, also concerns layouts and possible layout optimization), or in ArcGIS Desktop-General (because of that report element)? And if I was having a heck of a time getting my buffer GP tool to work for my Silverlight web app, do I put that in the GP or Silverlight forum? You guys might have better examples of these types of scenarios but I think you know what I mean that basically, a question can easily cross multiple forums/subforums. This is exactly why a tagging spider wont work. The cross catagory nature of all of the things we do would require a really intelligent spider. I have to dissagree with moving existing posts. That would just create confusion and like the above example, on what criteria would you move posts?. The new forum should be just that new. We need this new forum to get the number of posts of general python questions in other forums down, but that doesnt change that we need to some how promote tagging. Oh and Riverside, I believe I am a pythonisto not a pythonista 😉 ... View more

SP1 isnt out yet. Its expected within the next 3 weeks according to our local rep. ... View more

I think the split would be good on the grounds that python isnt just about GP. You can do all sorts of stuff to your tables and data that have nothing to do with the "geo" part. Half the python code I write is stats on my dbfs. Arcpy.mapping if nothing else makes python a separate catagory from GP. Taking python into its own forum would open up the disscussion to more avenues than just GP. Tags would never work, unless there was a user base who was constantly going and changing jimmy's incorrectly tagged question (ArcObjects or.. Arc Objects), like stackoverflow This point was made in the "Should we split" post. We would need a team that was keeping constant eye on posts or a very complex spider that was constantly crawling the forums tagging things. On another note, happy land of ArcObjects Since when is AO happy? It makes my brain hurt. ... View more

Well it looks like splitting out Python is winning in the poll. It does make sense to brak Python out of the GP forum simply because it seems that esri is becoming more python centric. if I were a non-Python user and read about the great things that other users are doing with arcpy.mapping, that alone would get me curious Not to add to add a non sequiter but Goh_Raj made me think that we need an online stuff gallery. The map gallery at the UC this summer was great for seeing carto/design ideas, but how about a code dump? More than anything the new forum would be a place to lurk and learn for newbies. ... View more

The problem is that a separate python 2.6 is installed in the arcmap directory. You need to go into a file and change or add a path to make it work. Im not sure since I am still at 9.3.1 but I know its come up a few times so if you do a search you should be able to find a solution. ... View more

I do this by making two scale bars and using guide lines to snap the top of one to the bottom of the other. Then selecting both items and doing "align left" to have both left edges the same. After that group the two and you you have one object with both bars. Not a one click solution but it only takes a minute to do. ... View more

Did you do the calculation with a python expresssion or a VB Script expression? A python expresssion will take 7 to 20 times as long to process as an equivalent VB Script expression on a joined table. I do join calculations all the time in python scripts with 100,000 records and using VB Script expressions. They usually take about 2 minutes or less per calculation, which I do not consider to be excessive (but if I had used a python expression the same calculation can take anywhere from 14 to 45 minutes, which is excessive). I suppose I was a bit vague. I mean that the gp.JoinField() takes a long time because it is adding a field or fields and calculating the data over into them. I want to avoid python code blocks in field calculator which is why I want to use a update cursor. Can anyone speak to the function of the update cursor on joined tables in v10? ... View more

I've tried using JoinField and then using CalculateField. But with a large data set, as small as 100,000 records,this method takes way to long to be practical. ... View more

Try this: gp.CalculateField_management (filename2, "Description", filename1, "VB","") What you were telling the tool is that your expression was the string 'filename1' not the value of the variable filename1. The easiest thing to do in Calculate Field is to do all of your calculations outside the tool syntax and then plug the value in with a variable. Also python code blocks in CF are tricky and can be a mess to debug as well so I try to avoid using them if I can. ... View more

I'd also love to eventually see the Help systems integrated with the forum systems for a help-wiki hybrid I actually find that searching on the help page and getting forum posts is really irritating. I know what I am looking for in the help usually and having to modify my search or fish through all the extraneous results is something I would rather not have to deal with. I like the stack-exchange concept but I feel that it is easier for question to get lost in that system. They get pushed off the bottom of the page and people dont get answers. We arent seeing very heavy traffic now but if traffic picked up a lot you could quickly lose questions if your answer people arent diligent. I still say no split. ... View more

Stretch type was none already. The RGB band however were all set to <default> so I set them appropriatly to 1,2,3 and like magic the rainbow effect is gone. Thanks for you help. ... View more

Actually this is in a file gdb. My boss had me make the raster catalogs and we were going to load them into the SDE at night along with some other data. Previously we have been using raster catalogs that appear to just be a dbf with the file paths as attributes. These are not stored in a geodatabase of any kind. ... View more