Latest Contributions by AndrewQuee

Our open data is all in our local spatial reference for domestic use in desktop GIS/mapping.   However, we're getting a lot of use out of web services in WGS_1984_Web_Mercator_Auxiliary_Sphere_3857 because it goes with Google maps to make mashups, with clients consuming our vector data over Google's imagery. ... View more

Without looking at your data, it's impossible to tell what the problem is.  As others have said, look very carefully at snapping, visibility and topology issues.  Also, simplify your editing environment - get rid of all layers and features to you do not need for this specific edit.  If necessary, copy all your 'background' features you want to trace into one layer and use this alone as a standalone single edit. As John Sobetzer​ said, you also do not need to complete the entire edit operation in one pass.  If you can that's great, if not, you might need to 'build up' the edit using a variety of smaller operations, possibly creating sub-parcels that you can later merge into your final shape. It's also worth mentioning that there's several ways of killing the proverbial cat without using cream (trace).  If your area is so small, I'd be looking at either overlaying a larger shape and using geometry operations to clip back to the edge you need, or a smaller one and using reshape edge to selected geometry if trace just isn't working.. ... View more

Testing of the most recently released version shows that it still cannot connect to AGOL through certain proxy services (Authenticated Forward Proxy using Squid).  This leads to 30min+ delays or timeouts on every single network operation, essentially making the software unusable in this configuration. Esri BUG-000083997  Incident Ref ID: E9CD311A29 Has any more work been done to correct this?  ... View more

Does this help?  https://community.esri.com/thread/99284 I can't find the reference now, but I'm sure this has been asked before and an Esri rep said that the credits were mandatory, which is why you can't get rid of them. ... View more

My background is about as far from science as you can get. I've always had an great interest in computers, and come from a gaming background.  I built computers for friends and family and provided support for years, getting into network and server support through LAN gaming.  I was an academic failure, and dropped out of CompSci at university (various reasons) although I then later went on to achieve an associate diploma in network engineering at technical college. After a stint as a builder's labourer, I got a basic secretarial qualification, which allowed me to obtain a clerical position with my state government for land management (property, titles, valuation, etc).  GIS was in it's infancy here, as we embarked on a program to spatialise property information state-wide and begin linking data silos together to this and each other. Over the last 20 years I have built incrementally from that start into what I am now - applications developer, GIS/automation support, minor DBA, technical support and business workflow research/development using GIS. For me, always being open to possibilities is the key - looking at new technologies and products, seeing how these interact with each other and how they might offer productive and technical advantages.  How these can synergise together to offset implementation costs.  By aggressively and pro-actively pursuing these things, that has helped our section maintain and increase productivity year on year in the face of endless cuts (-3%/annum for ten years).  We are one of the few sections in government that has done so, to my knowledge.  For example, my latest project is to help get rid of Oracle RDBMS, and replace it with a free system (PostgreSQL) using SDE, and replacing extensive customisations (whole workflow front end and feature edit extension) with workflow manager/versioning which would deliver substantial savings into the future.  Replacing ArcGIS with QGIS is not really an option, but we could perhaps move certain programs or products across to alternative GIS solutions, and reduce our reliance and business risk on Esri, especially with the admitted move to a subscription-based licence model. It helps if your employer is sympathetic and allows you the time and opportunity to learn and try new things as part of your day to day work.. ... View more

This is a good question.  While you can (as Michael said) use Workflow Manager from within ArcMap, depending on the workflow, there may actually be no GIS component for a lot of the workflow - checking policy/procedure, filling out PDF forms, notifying stakeholders, etc. In this case, managing the workflow outside of ArcMap and then calling it when you need to do a spatial task makes sense. To achieve this I believe Workflow Manager can open an MXD directly, and thus start ArcMap without needing TAM.  If you have a working document this is a good place to start, or you could simply open a blank MXD and proceed from there.  You could also use 'Execute Executable' to start arcmap.exe directly if you wanted to. Workflow Manager Step Types  (10.2) ... View more

We're in a similar position of mental disconnect as we're a government organisation that intend to share all of our codebase as open source.  Naturally, we don't want to be offering up all of our authentication information as embedded plaintext to the world, so handshaking methods like this are essential. Encrypted strings defined (10.1) I believe if you want to handle this via script, you'll need to call GetParameter in ArcPy, which delivers the GPEncryptedString automatically.  I found very few examples of how to do this.  Joel McCune discusses some of the implementation here, although the focus is not exactly on what you're doing. Relevant stackexchange question. ... View more

I believe the issue is that if the access ends when maintenance does, that creates a problem where an organisation may pay a large sum of money for full access to all products, with an enduring licence to continue using them unsupported outside maintenance, with Pro being an exception to this.  I don't have access to the ELA contract, so I don't know what the exact conditions around this are. The equivalent example would be Microsoft releasing a new replacement version of Word+Power Point (bring the two together into one application, with enhanced online collaboration) alongside the existing standalone products, but can only be accessed online (through 365).  So even if you licenced the full suite, your use of this program would be prevented if you do not keep up your support, even though you had already paid for it.  Which is not how this type of licensing has traditionally worked. Robert LeClair mentioned that "It comes with ArcGIS for Desktop at 10.3" - so the conclusion I make from that is that if you have paid for a permanent licence for 10.3, you should also have one for Pro seeing as 'it comes with it'.  In the same way that extensions you have licensed also do not expire. I guess the concern among users is that some time in the future obviously Pro will become the replacement for Desktop, yet Pro is not available under any condition except a subscription model, so if you fail to keep paying, you will lose your entire GIS capability. ... View more

Agreed.  In  the meantime, Layer to GPX (as suggested by swalbridge) and DNRGPS do a good job.  We find that the ArcMap application link for DNRGPS is a bit 'twitchy' but when you use it to convert shapefiles, it's quite solid.  Our emergency services team use it on deployment for capturing active fire fronts, etc. ... View more

Thanks, the registry hack is simple and painless compared to the hassle of waiting around for the hours it takes to uninstall and reinstall ArcGIS (and all the requisite service packs, patches, bugfixes, extensions, customisations, user environments, ad nauseam...). I found you do not need to alter the InstallDir key.  The GDBT installer only checks the ...\ESRI\Desktop10.0 one.  Simply change whatever version you have to 0 there, install GDBT, then change it back.  You don't even need to close regedit. ... View more

As at 10.2, as J.Sobetzer noted previously, ArcGIS can read but not write MrSID.  Afaik, the request is not possible out of the box unless you licensed the encoder from Lizardtech. Here is a detailed example of doing almost exactly what you wanted to do, but taking SIDs and outputting TIFFs.  It would be trivial to swap the input and output formats. FMEpedia - Raster Mosaicking Scenario This of course, supposes you have access to Safe Software's FME... ... View more

I just had to work with this  this yesterday.   The dialog canot be resized, scroll bars are fiddly, along with all the issues you've listed here.  You cannot double-click to fit column width to data, and for extra-long entries, you cannot even drag out past the window, you have to click-drag over and over and over and over... It's a terrible, horrible interface. ..and it gets worse!  Not only it is impossible to sort any of the columns, if you edit a subtype, ArGIS slaps it back to the bottom of the list.  This means after a number of edits, the list makes no sense at all, and is a mish-mash jumble of items in a random order. In order to actually sort the domain, you must edit each and every entry, then manually edit them all in order. One. At. A. Time. Pressing. Apply. After. Each. And. Every. Edit.   ...and then hope you've got it right, becuase if not... you get to do it all again!  Whee! /s Yes, I did try the ArcTool.  It failed, saying the DB was locked, despite me being the only user connected. ... View more

I just had to work with this  this yesterday.   The dialog canot be resized, scroll bars are fiddly, along with all the issues you've listed here.  You cannot double-click to fit column width to data, and for extra-long daat, you cannot even drag out past the window, you have to click-drag over and over and over and over... It's a terrible, horrible interface. ..and it gets worse!  Not only it is impossible to sort any of the columns, if you edit a subtype, ArGIS slaps it back to the bottom of the list.  This means after a number of edits, the list makes no sense at all, and is a mish-mash jumble of items in a random order. In order to actually sort the domain, you must edit each and every entry, then manually edit them all in order. One. At. A. Time. Pressing. Apply. After. Each,. And. Every. Edit.  (and then hope you've got it right, becuase if not... you get to do it all again!  Whee! /s (Yes, I did try the ArcTool.  It failed, saying the DB was locked, despite me being the only user connected) ... View more

Good point Michael.  Michael Volz As we've had a couple of issues like this as well, we tend to use this method a lot now for each operation: with open(path + 'Log_' + Date + '.log', 'a') as output: #open log file in append mode.         output.write(logentry) output.close() Although this slows down the process quite a bit, it's better to know exactly what happened and at what point rather than the script simply crashing and not flushing the output cache to file. Edit: Added code format style to snippet, for some reason it wouldn't let me choose this when wrote my reply. ... View more