Latest Contributions by ChrisFox

If you are at ArcGIS 10 and have at least an arceditor license level I would recommend you use Geodatabase attachments: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Enabling_attachments/001t000003vt000000/ ... View more

I don't know if there is a proper way, but if you are using shapefiles it would be advisable you use hyperlinks that are defined by values in a field. The workflow would be to in the case of a PDF, add a new string or text field and for each feature add the appropriate path to the pdf to that field. Then you can set Field property for Hyperlinks for the layer to this new field. This unfortunately will only support one hyperlink per feature, but it is much safer for shapefiles.  ... View more

Unfortunately when your hyperlinks are maintained this way there is no out of the box solution to get a list of the hyperlinked documents for the layer. I would also caution you if you are you are maintaining hyperlinks in this way when the underlying data is a Shapefile. In the help it says the following: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00s500000004000000.htm After deleting features from a shapefile, you may find that dynamic hyperlinks are attached to different features. This occurs because ArcMap uses the feature ID (FID) field to associate dynamic hyperlinks with features, but the FIDs of shapefiles must be recalculated when features are deleted. To ensure hyperlinks are always associated with the proper features, only use dynamic hyperlinks with geodatabase features classes (geodatabase features always have unique ID values). Field-based hyperlinks can be used with shapefiles without this limitation. ... View more

Are you maintaining the hyperlinks using the Support Hyperlinks using field option in the layer properties, or by going through the identify window and adding hyperlinks? If you are using the field option, what data type is the field? ... View more

In ArcMap, right-click the field that contains the hyperlink paths to the PDFs and select summarize, specify the output location of the table and click ok. This will produce a table with all the unique hyperlinks used for the shapefile. ... View more

One thing to consider is that a point feature class can also be a multi-point feature class which means each row could contain the definition of x number or points. ... View more

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