Latest Contributions by ChrisFox

Lauren, I was under the impression you were working with attachments available only in the Geodatabase. This functionality is not available to shapefiles. When you say attachments what exactly do you mean? Are you talking about setting a field to contain url or paths to documents as a hyperlink? ... View more

Attachments are managed using a composite relationship class to a table in the Geodatabase. To get a list you can open the related table and it will show you all the attachments for that feature class and contain the related feature's Object ID. You can use this to list the attachements for specific features. ... View more

I am not completely familar with the functionality of the Detailed Area Insets toolbar, but it is possible with data driven pages to have the extent of one data frame be controlled by the data frame enabled for data driven pages. You can then control the approximate ratio of scale of one data frame to another. To set this open the properties for the data frame you wish to use as the inset and go to the Data Frame tab. Under Extent from the dropdown select "Other Data Frame" and choose the data frame you wish to get the extent from (In this case the data frame used for DDP). You can play with the margin % to adjust the relative scale of the inset data frame. ... View more

There is no way to turn on or off data driven pages through python, however if you want to zoom to the extent of each page and save it to a new map document you can do this very easily through python. Below is a code sample: import arcpy, os mxdPath = r"C:\Project\DDPMap.mxd" mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(mxdPath) mxdDir = os.path.dirname(mxdPath) for pageNum in range(1, mxd.dataDrivenPages.pageCount + 1):     mxd.dataDrivenPages.currentPageID = pageNum     mxdName = os.path.join(mxdDir, "DDPMap" + str(pageNum) + ".mxd")     mxd.saveACopy(mxdName) del mxd ... View more

Sorry for the late response on this one. If you are restricting write access to the C: Drive one thing you could do is leverage folder redirection to redirect the user profile application data to a location that the user does have write access to. This Microsoft article discusses this topic further: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732275.aspx ... View more

Below is a help document topic that discusses how to accomplish this workflow: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//003t00000026000000 ... View more

You don't have the ability to change the symboloy renderer. For example you can't change a layer from graduated color to unique value and you can't control individual symbols. A better workaround to turning on and off layers would be to author your layer files once, save them to disk and use UpdateLayer with the SymbologyOnly paramater set to True to import the symbology for the layer in an automated way. ... View more

This option is available with Maplex and at version 10.1 maplex will be available at all license levels. ... View more

At 10.1 we have made some improvements to the arcpy.mapping module to add some control over symbology to aid in automating thematic mapping. Although you will still not be able to update individual symbols you will have some control over the following: Determine whether the layer is using a unique value, graduated color, graduated symbol, or raster classified renderer Set the class breaks, number of classes and value field used by the graduated color, graduated symbol and raster classified renderer Set the value field and visible values for the unique value renderer Things like the color ramp used, or classification method will need to be authored for the layer in ArcMap before automating through python. Thank you for posting your idea and comments and we will continue to make improvements to arcpy.mapping to support the automation of map production. ... View more

At 10.1 with the new function ExportReport you will be able to create a dynamic map series with an accompaning report. By using the dataset option "Extent" you can automate the process of for each map extent creating a report specific to the features within the extent. This will get you part of the way, but I definetly see the value in having dynamic graphing capabilities as well. ... View more

Data Driven Pages has the ability to set unique scale for each page with the use of Data Driven Scale. All you need is a numeric field in your index layer that contains the scale you wish to use for that page. For example if the first row in your index layer has a value of 1,000 the page will center the extent of the page on the center of the extent of the first row's feature and set the scale to 1:1,000. If the second row is 100,000 it wil center the extent again for that feature and set the scale to 1:100,000. To enable Data Driven Scale from the Setup Data Driven Pages dialog under the Extent tab select the radio button next to Data Driven Scale and select the appropriate field that will contain the extent values. ... View more

Unfortunately you will not be able to edit, create, import or export bookmarks with arcpy at 10.1. There is a new function, ListBookmarks that will return a list of tuples that contain the bookmark name and associated extent object for workflows where you may want to create a map series based on the extents defined by the bookmarks in the map document. ... View more

It would be pretty straight-forward to do this through Python with Field Mapping, but the issue would be Field Aliases don't have the same restrictions as field names do such as names with spaces, contain invalid charaters not to mention you can have multiple fields with the same alias name. ... View more

At 10.1 you will be able to do this through python as you can utilize the new ListBookmarks function to return a list of extents of your bookmarks and in a loop adjust the extent of your data frame based on the extent of each bookmark. ... View more

Thank you for posting this idea. There is a georocessing tool, "Export Metadata Multiple" that allows you to input multiple ArcGIS items and export all the Metadata to a single folder. ... View more