Latest Contributions by TimOrmsby

Also, right-click on the Streets basemap layer in the Table of Contents and choose Analyze Layer. This will open a window at the bottom of ArcMap that might have some useful information. Tim ... View more

By the way, although the basemap issues are unrelated to whether you're using ArcGIS Desktop 10 or 10.1, you may encounter some other changes to functionality or the user interface that affect the book instructions. We haven't fully catalogued these yet, but I think you should still be able to do everything in the book. I think there are differences in the way coordinate systems are exposed in the user interface (which may affect Exercise 3B) and probably some other stuff, too. If you get stuck, let us know. Tim ... View more

Hi Patrick, You're doing everything right. The changes with respect to the Streets and Imagery basemaps have to do with the fact that this data is hosted online. Esri has updated and reorganized it since the book was published. With respect to the Streets basemap, which is added in Step 2D (p. 8): its sublayer used to be called Streets and is now called World_Street_Map, as you noted. This doesn't affect anything you do. The basemap is essentially the same, although your views may not match the images in the book exactly, because some cartographic changes have been made. (More labels appear at certain map scales, for example.) With respect to the Imagery basemap, which is added in Step 13B (p. 22): this is a bit trickier, because some of the sublayers that used to be part of this basemap, namely Boundaries and Places and Transportation, aren't included anymore. Here are some things you can do: 1. Instead of adding the Imagery basemap, add the Imagery with Labels basemap. This will actually add two layers to your Table of Contents: an Imagery basemap (at the bottom of the TOC) and a Reference layer (at the top of the TOC). The Reference layer contains boundaries and places. 2. To get the transportation information, click the Add Data dropdown arrow (just as you do to add a basemap) but this time choose Add Data from ArcGIS Online. In the Search box at the top, type Transportation and press Enter. Click Add on the World Transportation map service. (See the attached image for how your screen should look.) This will add a layer called World Transportation to the top of your TOC. The two steps just described are what is needed to recreate the effect in the book. Because the place names and transportation are now served as separate layers, Step 14 of the book (Make a layer sandwich) on p. 24 becomes unnecessary. If you follow these two steps, you'll notice, as with the Streets basemap, that the cartography has changed somewhat as well. Your screen won't match the book images exactly, but should be pretty close. As you continue through the book, there may be places where screen shots don't match but you shouldn't have any problems doing the exercises. An alternative is just to use the Imagery basemap as described in the book and accept the absence of place names and transportation features. This also shouldn't prevent you from doing any of the exercises. This is primarily an issue in Lesson 1. It may crop up again elsewhere in the book but not too often. I'm going to post a more detailed document on our resource center page http://resources.arcgis.com/en/communities/understanding-gis/ that describes the workaround in more detail. I should have that done sometime today and I'll add a post to this thread when it's ready. Sorry for the confusion and thanks for alerting us to the problem. If you have any other questions, please let us know. Tim ... View more

Hi John, glad you found a way to work through it. FYI, the attached text file has information from an Esri tech analyst who looked at the problem. May be helpful if this comes up again. Tim ... View more

Hi John, What do you see if you view the properties of the data in ArcCatalog? (See below for steps to do this.) For me, it's like this: when ArcCatalog looks at the data on the DVD, it has the property "R" (read-only). But when I copy the data from the DVD to my local drive (even with just a straight file copy, not through the data installer), ArcCatalog sees it as "W" (writable). Interestingly, Windows Explorer still shows it as read-only. Attached images show the two cases. To make ArcCatalog show the read/write property, follow these steps: Start the ArcCatalog application. From the Customize menu, choose ArcCatalog Options. Click the Contents tab. In the top window, check the Read/Write box. Click OK. Now, in ArcCatalog, the Contents tab will show the Read/Write status for files and folders. If you see "W," then give those original operations (Load Data, Append) another try. If you see, "R" -- even after having installed the data with the Data Installer -- or if the operations still don't work, I'll try to get a tech support person to help. There is a Microsoft support page on changing the read/write attributes on files through the CMD window when you can't do it through the file properties. It's here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549 if you want to look at it. But I don't think you should have to go down this path. Let me know what happens. Tim ... View more

Hi John, Sorry for the trouble. To change read/write permissions on files, you have to use Windows Explorer, not ArcGIS. Try this: In Windows Explorer, right-click the folder name (start with the UGIS folder) and choose Properties. On the General tab of the Properties dialog box, uncheck the Read-Only box at the bottom and click OK. You'll be prompted to apply the changes to all subfolders. Click OK again. I hope this does the trick. (Maybe this is where the original Load Data problem comes from, too.) If after that, you still have problems with Load Data or Append, try downloading the Lesson 3 results folder from the Lesson Results page on our web site. This will set you back to the beginning of Lesson 4, so you'll have to cover a bit of old ground (but not too much) to get back to page 142. In fact, you might want to go to the trouble of sequentially downloading the results for Lessons 1, 2, and 3 to make sure all files with read/write problems are replaced. When you originally installed the project data from the DVD, did you do it by clicking the Esri.exe file? (See attached graphic.) If not--if you directly copied the files instead--that might explain why the permissions weren't set correctly for you to begin with. Doing a reinstall at this point would amount to starting over, though, so downloading lesson results from the web site is better. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Let me know if any of these suggestions get it sorted out for you. If not, we'll go back to the drawing board. Tim ... View more