Latest Contributions by mattwilkie

I would like to be able to change the location for Geoprocessing Results on a per project (a.k.a. session) basis, similar to the way one can assign a Home folder and Default Geodatabase. ArcMap has the beginnings of this feature in that each .mxd has it's own Results session history, but global sessions, e.g. a map has not been saved, are thrown out. I want a method to keep these without laborious saving of each one before ending the ArcMap session (either because user has closed it, or it has crashed). So this default results-history location would then keep the results history for un-saved Arcmap documents, and ArcCatalog sessions (which only has global session history, and no concept of projects). ... View more

This is a question for the Esri developers or anyone else that has insight into the inner workings of ArcGIS. In the attribute table of an Annotation Feature Class we see Fontname, Fontsize, Bold, all the way through to CharacterSpacing and FlipAngle. There are no less than 15 attributes to control the appearance of a feature, yet somehow what is arguably the most changed attribute of all is not there. Why is color absent? It can't be simple oversight.   thanks.   -matt (The question behind the question: how does a person change the color of more than 4 thousand annotation features in one go? Interactive changes via ArcMap Editor or Drawing toolbar works are possible but sketchy (ref) and using text formatting tags or symbol overrides are non-starters.) ... View more

In another thread the formidable Vince Angelo was seen saying "It's best practice to not access FGBDs over a network link". Would someone in the know please expand on that? What makes it not best practice? I'm most interested in read-by-many users and write-by-one (or few) scenario but please feel free to go beyond that. Thanks. ... View more

I�??m concerned about observed inconsistency in an exported tiff layout. Some of the cells are clearly processed at a much coarser resolution than neighbours, and in a region than the source data should be heterogeneous. See attached screenshot. (I don�??t have coordinates for the area because Arcmap doesn�??t know how to export an image with geo-referencing from a layout. It�??s in Northern British Columbia, approximately 56.5N to 57.5N). If this kind of random cell size change also happens when doing analysis we can�??t trust any of the results. Screenshot: [ATTACH=CONFIG]32409[/ATTACH] Full exported image (85mb): http://files.environmentyukon.ca/matt/Esri_World_Terrain.tif And a package of the map document that created it: http://yukon.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c9d4a8c761154a7a962b616bed01f723 ... View more

Hi Folks, We've run into a very frustrating and hard to pin down problem writing certain kinds of data to our NAS devvice, a QNAP TS-879U-RP, firmware v4.0.5. I'd be extremely grateful for any light you may be able to shed on the issue, which is: Certain operations from ArcMap always fail when the destination is on the NAS, and always succeed when the destination is a local drive or Windows Server 2003 (x64). We've replicated this from 3 different client machines (albeit all Win7x64), and from 3 different user profiles. We've disabled oplocks on the shares from the QNAP admin console, to no avail. How do we troubleshoot this? The application: ArcMap v10.2.1 (first noticed at 10.2. Not sure about 10.1). The operation: Feature Class To Feature Class (Conversion) Details from Arcmap results pain:     Executing: FeatureClassToFeatureClass Z:\source\simple_box.shp Z:\out\default.gdb from_Arcmap_nas_no_oplocks # "Name "Name" true true false 60 Text 0 0 ,First,#,Z:\source\simple_box.shp,Name,-1,-1" #     Start Time: Wed Feb 05 10:05:16 2014     ERROR 000210: Cannot create output Z:\out\default.gdb\from_Arcmap_nas_no_oplocks     Invalid function arguments     Invalid function arguments     Cannot acquire a lock.     The table was not found. [from_Arcmap_nas_no_oplocks]     Failed to execute (FeatureClassToFeatureClass).     Failed at Wed Feb 05 10:05:18 2014 (Elapsed Time: 2.04 seconds) Interestingly, the same process run straight from a python command shell works (see attached). This leads me to think QNAP is treating the desktop application, ArcMap, and the sub-shell geo-processing operation as two different users/machines. Or something. I've contacted Esri Tech Support, and we've gone through a few rounds on it, but essentially the response is: since the operation is fine on Windows Server and fine on the local machine, it's not their application, and thus they're not in a position to do anything about it. Other operations which we've had fail but are harder to narrow down into a simple recipe like the above are: "Failed to past feature_class_name. Cannot acquire a schema lock because of an existing lock" when copy pasting a feature class with a relationship class from one file gdb to another "Could not load data from the data source. If you can correct the problem, press the refresh button to reload the data. Possible problems can include bad network connection, invalid field, etc. Cannot acquire a lock. Cannot acquire a lock." when running Calculate Field on a shapefile I'd really like to solve this, as it's a deal breaker for the device. If we can't rely it on for our bread and butter application, out the door it goes (but I like the qnap!). ... View more

It would be very nice to be able to export Cartographic Representation Symbols to SVG, EMF, EPS, etc. so they can be re-used for other purposes and contexts. For example as it stands now (Arcmap v10.2.1) one can't display a CR symbol in the legend at a different size than it's being used in the map, something we do very often. So I resort to a length workaround of recreating the symbol in vector drawing program like Illustrator or Inkscape and then bringing it back in again as a picture or normal  Picture Fill Symbol. Additionally, the Marker Editor of CR should be be the default symbol editor for all of Arcmap, meaning it should replace Symbol Property Editor.  While we're at it, the Maker Editor should be able to import and export, at least, SVG and EMF. ... View more