Latest Contributions by RobertBorchert

I do not think there is any good way to get around that.  That is the nature. When you change the paper size you change the relative scale.  Think on it this way. pretend in your smaller map that 1 inch = 1 mile (or km) in the real world.  now you make your paper larger and you spread that area on your map to fit, now 1 inch = 1.5 miles (or km).  Everything changes. However, when you are changing paper size there is a check box to scale map elements proportionally to changes in page size. Also in the layout view you can use the Select Elements tool to select everthing and then you right click and properties size and position.  There you can adjust size. Check the preserve aspect ration option first.  then you can specify your size and location on the page. Also, if you just need to make your maps larger for printing.  Simply export or print your 8 1/2 by 11 maps as PDF and then in Acrobat (or reader) change the paper size and have it fit to paper. Good Afternoon Everyone. Currently I am converting a large amount of maps from 8.5 by 11 (normal size) to 11 by 17 large size. Whenever I change the printer settings to the larger size the original map stays the same size. Unfortunately this makes re-sizing and reformatting an arduous chore as each element and graphic needs to be re-sized, re-scaled and re-shaped. Is there any way to change the size (or print settings of a document in ArcMap) and have the current existing map products adapt to this new size automatically instead of manually changing each element? Thanks for your help ... View more

You would have to manually clean up those that fell outside. Or you could create annotation.  make the label a single period.  Create the labels so they are placed inside the polygon and not allowed to go outside.  Annotate them and X,Y the centroid of the annotation polygon. Then you would have to join the point feature to the polygon to extract the PIN. Probably more of an issue if you are in an area with metes and bounds parcels or with a lot of long lots. Look at the samples I posted. I found a lake in my system where the centroid falls outside of the lake.  I created labels out of Ampersands and then generated X,Y on the lakes.  You can then generate points from those x,y coordinates. I tried it again using the lake name as the label and just made it really small. It still puts the anno in the polygon somewhere. However, by using the lake name, or in your case the PIN it would preserve the PIN when you create points from that X,Y data. What if the centroid falls outside the parcel? ... View more

If you generate centroids for the parcels that resulting point feature will contain the parcel id number that is associated with the PIN.  Then you join the point feature to the tax roll table and you now have a point feature that contains all the data from tax roll and is in the middle of the parcel. Same result as geocoding except without as many geocoding errors or headaches ... View more

try the Euclidean Direction  distance tool or the Near tool. However I think most of your built in options may require the Spatial Analysis extension. Suppose a straight line with a certain rotation angle 'alpha', intersec with a poligon, how to measure the segment within this poligon? My plan is to use this routine to find the maximum 'width' of the polygon for a certain angle. Thanks, shane ... View more

If the tax roll and the parcels are joined by PIN why not simply create a centroid for each parcel and append the Tax Roll data to the resulting point feature. I'm trying to create a geocoding service using a parcel feature class and a tax roll table. Parcel feature has the location, and the tax roll has the address and street data for a single house geocoding search. The parcels and the tax roll are usually joined by parcel id number. I noticed that the geocoding uses either alternative names or alias tables. Is there any way to use the parcel features and the tax roll table for geocoding without having to merge them into a new "parcel with addresses" feature? I'm using ArcGIS 10.0, ArcCatalog, and will make the address locator available through ArcGIS Server as part of a composite address locator, if any of that helps. ... View more

Do you have to do it in Model Builder.  If not you are over working the project. Simply perform a join in the table of contents between the two and then export the joined shapefile to a new feature class I am trying to join (doesn't have to be a join if there is something better) a shapefile to a .dbf table which is a one-to-one relationship.  This will need to be repeated several times so I a trying to do this in ModelBuilder.  Once this join is made, I will then need to add fields and do further calculations on the data in the attribute table.  Outside of MobelBuilder, I would make the join then save it as a new shapefile.  I have not figured out how to do this within ModelBuilder (since I can't seem to save the join as a new shapefile).  The product from the join of the .dbf and the shapefile keeps producing an error when I try to connect it to another tool like "Add Field".  "The value cannot be a joined table."  I tried the "Feature Class to Shapefile" tool but that product is the folder where the file is stored and can't be connected to anything else either.  Tried a few other things that also failed.  Any advice on what tools to look into using instead or how to work around this road block?  Thanks! Mel ... View more

When you say it doesn't draw both do you mean that one of them does not appear in the table of contents.  If both appear right click on each in turn and zoom to layer.  do you each of them when you do that. When I try display both shapefiles, the one unprojected, ArcMap doesnt draw both, it draws the projected shapefile only. I will try creating a geodatabase, hopefully that works. Thanks Robert ... View more

Well written. Since I still see many people here on the forums struggle with the multitude of options and names of ESRI software applications involved with geodatabases and storage of spatial data in enterprise databases, I decided to create a PDF document and diagram to explain the most important parts of ESRI's "Geodatabase Framework". I hope this clears up some of the confusion around distinctions between things like "ArcSDE Application Server (3-tier)" and "Direct Connect (2-tier)" connections, and what the relationships and functions of "ArcGIS for Desktop", "ArcGIS for Server", "Spatial Data Server", etc. to all of this are. I realize representing such things in a diagram has its limitations and some parts may be arguable as to the way represented, but I still hope many people will get a better understanding of how all components of ESRI's "Geodatabase Framework" fit together by viewing it. As it is based on my own knowledge and understanding, I can not guarantee correctness, if anyone has comments or spots an obvious error, feel free to contact me, or post in this thread, and I will attempt to correct and update the document when I have time. Any general comments (good or bad) are welcome too here in the thread. I wrote this entirely in my free time (and it took a lot), so be kind... 😉 Let me know if you found it useful. Due to file size limitations here on the forum, I have included a higher resolution version of the main "ESRI Geodatabase Framework" diagram in a separate document (the one with HQ diagram in the name). The main diagram is also included in the first document, but for printing on a bigger size than A4, or to get a higher quality print-out of the main diagram, you may wish to download the separate HQ document and print that as well. Have a good read! Marco ... View more

In E911 we called what you are looking for as a MSAG.  Master Street Address Guide.  However, it was a lot more complex than what you want. To make it the most accurate you may have to break all the streets at the boundaries of the suburbs and map pages. Then create two new attributes in the streets for X,Y make them type as double Use the calculate Geometry tool to create the X,Y for the street Midpoint. use the resulting X,Y to create point events.  You can delete the X,Y locations that don't have a street name. Export the point events to your database. Create the appropriate attributes in your new point layer. Transfer the attributes of the underlying polygons to the appropriate attributes in the x,y point layer. you will now have a sortable feature from which you can create your index. Other than the breaking of the streets at the polygon boundaries the rest of it is actually pretty quick.  By using the midpoint of the street the break in the streets does not have to be perfect on the edge of the polygon. You can also create the X,Y based on the centroid of the annotation.  I think the first method would be more accurate as the second would depend on the accuracy of your annotation placement.  Meaning IF the center line falls close to the boarder of a polygon the centroid of the annotation could be in an adjoining polygon. Hi All, I am trying to create a street index for a series of map books that we produce in our organisation... The map books contain many pages and each page contains several suburbs and many streets/roads. What we are trying to achieve is a street index which contains the following columns: a) Street name b) The suburb in which that street is c) Page number that it appears on d) the X,Y grid reference of the piece of annotation that identifies the street. We can create an index that satisfies all of the above criteria but it gets a bit more complex than that as we want to list every suburb that the street goes through (not just the suburb, page number and X,Y co-ords of where the annotation sits) but have the grid reference referencing only the closest related annotation for the given street. e.g. Main Street runs through suburbs A and B on page 41 and Suburb C on page 42 but the annotation sits within Suburb B on page 41 at grid ref 257-945 and Suburb C on page 42 at grid ref 257-015. So we want Main Street to be listed as existing in Suburbs A and B on Page 41 and Suburb C on page 42 but the co-ordinates of each record to be referencing the location of the annotation on each page. For example... Name               |    Suburb    |    Page   |    Ref         Main Street    |   A   |      41   |    257-945 Main Street    |   B   |      41   |    257-945 Main Street    |   C   |      42   |    257-015 We also want to list only the roads that are annotated/labelled and leave out the roads that weren't labelled. This rules out using the roads layer to generate the index as that would result in an index containing all the roads in the dataset whereas in reality not all the roads are labelled and we don't want to list a road that is not labelled as the user may not be able to determine which street it is due to a lack of a label. So far, I have an annotation feature class which contains a text string field containing the road name in full, an X co-ordinate field populated with the X co-ordinate of the piece of text, and a Y co-ordinate field populated with the Y co-ordinate of the piece of text. Next I've got a roads feature class which has been dissolved so that all roads of the same name are merged into one, then the result was intersected with the page extents featureclass so each road record contains the page number it appears on (as a result, road lines are split at the page boundary), and then that result was intersected again against the suburbs featureclass so that each road also contains the suburb it appears in and is also split at the suburb boundary. This featureclass contains a Name field containing the road name in full, Suburb field containing the suburb name and Page Number field containing the page number. If anybody would have any idea on how to generate such an index, I would appreciate any assistance. I have tried table joins and spatial joins to no avail. Thanks... ... View more

In AutoCAD they are called Splines.  They are a serious pain in the buttock. Try this on a copy of the CAD dwg Go to the CAD drawing and perform build and clean. Do a query to select all splines and explode them.  IT should turn them into simple polylines The do build and clean again. I have converted a lot of AutoCAD drawings to ArcGIS and it is a recurring issue. I have several planimetric Autocad dwgs that contain polylines with curves that are not correctly interpreted when viewed in ArcGIS 10.1. The symptom can be seen in the attached image. The problem persists if I save the dwg as any dwg version from R14 thru 2010. A collegue sees the same problem when using ArcGIS 10.0 SP1. [ATTACH=CONFIG]23910[/ATTACH] Has anyone had this issue with CAD dwgs? Is there a fix on the way? So far, the only work around is to export to a shapefile from Autocad. Exporting Data from ArcGIS preserves the spurious data. Many thanks in advance, Bill ... View more

I believe the poster is saying that the name of the attribute to distinguish the name of the street field varies. i.e. Street  or Street Name or Address1, or StNam etc... How can there be 5 different names for a street? I think you must have missed the key features of a locator that can match alternative abbreviations and spellings for prefixes and suffixes. It can handle a lot of variation for a street name. Are you also including alternative locations as a different street name? These can be added as alias list for the same street name. You can edit the XML configuration file to add more alternatives to handle the combinations. What about posting a few examples so we can see if they are really different? ... View more

Yes, I have created a number of models that have had many dozens of processes. You can right click on a process and choose properties then preconditions and choose which processes have to be done before that process can start.  Otherwise I believe that generally it will execute the processes in the order they were created. Can a model have more than one process? ... View more

Ok I I was trying it on a label text box. I got it to work.  You are doing Insert > Text Try doing it by just writing in your text. The use Select Elements and right click on the text box and select properties.  Now make your adjustment here. I just did it and it worked just fine. I tried both, but it just prints out the syntax?  It's a basic map that I added a text box to.  when I try to format color though Change Symbol button, all the text changes.  I just want certain words to be blue. ... View more

Oh, wait a minute what you did should work. Try using '  instead of " I added a text box to a map and want to format certain parts of the text.  I followed the the examples on how to change color but all that shows up is the actual syntax.  nothing changes. for example,  <CLR red ="255">Depaul</CLR>  doesn't change the color red, it just reads as is? is there something I am doing wrong? Using ArcMap 10.0 thanks Enrique ... View more

Here is the proper format <clr red="255" green="0" blue ="0">Depaul</clr> If you want it to simply be just red you can leave out the green and blue parameters.  If you want a custom color you include all three. If your trying to customize labels based on Data Driven Pages you put the two parts on either size of the Data Driven pages label. Hope this helps I added a text box to a map and want to format certain parts of the text.  I followed the the examples on how to change color but all that shows up is the actual syntax.  nothing changes. for example,  <CLR red ="255">Depaul</CLR>  doesn't change the color red, it just reads as is? is there something I am doing wrong? Using ArcMap 10.0 thanks Enrique ... View more