Latest Contributions by KenLucas

Jonathan,    Following your tips, we are able to replace the one style that is saved in the C drive folder loc with one that has our unique symbols, but it still must retain our user name, twilliams.sty We can't figure out how to change the name of the style, from our user name to the desired, "FEMA Symbols".  Also, if we save multiple styles into that folder it will only recognize the one with our user name.  When we attempt to add a new style through the symbol - style reference tab it adds it to the list and renames the style with the folder pathway. Could you give us the steps we would use to change the name of the style? How can we get multiple, unique named styles available in the symbol selection pane? Ken ... View more

Jeff,   Thanks for the pathway; it worked, we downloaded the data, and will work thru it, along with trying the source code you already gave us in our DDP. I noted your tip about setting show = all content Ken ... View more

Jeff,   Thanks for hanging in with my supervisor & I on this problem. We're really interested to emply the arcpy script you provided earlier to this initial thread to build the tables on a DDP and to check the source coding in your last reply. We just tried the link you gave us and it did not lead us to a useful page. Can you try another way to hook us up with the page?  Maybe, you could tell me the path I should follow into the ESRI website from my ESRI user log in "kltrooper". Ken ... View more

Clint,    Your explanation, about the tool not seeing Excel, makes perfect sense to those of us who know ESRI well.  Thank you. To sum up: With the add graphic element, I can only see the DBF files I have in the MXD ToC.  The challenge for us is: Microsoft Excel no longer allows saving as the DBF format.  Can you suggest how I might make many global changes to fields, in an exported DBF, and then get that data joined back to my layer, so I can update the attribure fields with the field calculator? Ken ... View more

Jeff,   I'm with the dept of water resources, state of Nv. We should just got set up with the Map Production Extension to access the add graphic element option. We've spent hours experimenting with the add graphic element option we now have avail and just are not getting the results we need. We have two questions for you: 1. You made an earlier reply to this thread, saying that, once you have a table built on the DDP, you can just populate it with dynamic text. We'd like you clarify this statement. We understand you to mean we should use the Insert - add dynamic text option on the top toolbar, with the DDP enabled, and reference an attribute table from our index layer. However, this would require us to edit that field in the attribute table if we want to make updates to the data inserted on the DDP.      Our question is: can you give us arcpy code to reference, or link, to a specific excel table for a specific DDP; in other words we'd like to have many excel tables linked to specific cells in the tables we build on many DDPs. We know we can set up a dynmaic link to one excel table for multiple DDPs, but how to do we set up a diff link to each of our DDPs? 2. We created an empty table structure, on a DDP, using the production mapping - add graphic element option, but we can't get it to link with an excel table that we have in our ToC for that DDP MXD. We've tried adjusted the Source tab in the graphic table properties. How do we link a graphic table element to a specific excel sheet for a specific page?   Our goal is to have a seperate excel sheet assigned for each of our DDPs, so that we can quickly update specific cell data. We want to avoid having to edit many attribute fields. Ken ... View more

Lucas,   Thanks for your prompt reply. My supervisor and I are both attemtping, what should be a simple task, to save a symbol to a folder location on our server. After a lot of tries we only end up with a style called "Ken.style" stored in C/users/ken/app data/roaming/esri/desktop10/arcmap. At that point we have two problems: 1. We can't access the ken.style, with windows explorer, in order to copy&paste it into a folder on our server. We also can't seem to find the tool you mentioned, Export Map Styles, in either the symbol selector wizard or in a search for geoprocessing tools. 2. When we do symbol Save As and attempt to enter a new Catagory Name of "Fema" in the symbol save as wizard box, we get an error message "can't find Fema". We also tried Style References - Create new style and still don't see our new style catagory, Fema. How do we save a symbol catagory named something else than ken.style and how to do we get that copied from the C drive default loc to somewhere else? Ken, dept of water resources, state of Nevada ... View more

Jonathan,   I didn't think of making a change to the tag code. I'll try it and reference an attribute field. Thank you, Ken ... View more

I just worked thru MapbookwithGraphicTables 10v1 exercise. The section on the arcpy script for the tables seems to indicate that the 3 tables that show on the bottom center of the MXD were made from scratch and don't seem to reference Excel tables. Is there developer python script that allows us to embed a diff excel sheet for each different page of a DDP series? We can add an object to a DDP and even link that added ojbect table to an excel sheet, but this won't allow us to link diff DDP pages to diff excel sheets. What is the path for the place on the ESRI website where the developer python scripts are stored? Ken ... View more

Christopher,   I gave the above centering challenge hours of trial & error yesterday and you offered two really effective ways to handle it that I'd not, remotely, considered. I never thought of simply editing the index layers to fit. Although simply specifying the buffer as the index layer, in the DDP wizard, is the most effective thing to do. I just tried it and I ended up with page driven buffer circles, which will work great for my project.  You really made my day with your advice.  Thank you so much for helping me. Ken ... View more

Eric Rice,   Thank you so much for experimenting with my problem. We need to process a lot of the USGS geocommunity Dem data to cover our project areas throughout Nevada. After reading about your efforts, and finding out that it worked for you, I got my office IT people involved: we think the problem is not GIS, rather the Windows 7 default zip file extraction tool appears not to be extracting the USGS data. Our theory is another app, such as WinZip,  would work for extracting those geocomm .TAR files. Unfortunately, our state office does not have WinZip available for me to test. If you wouldn't mind hanging here with us just for one my test: if you would send me a USGS geocomm DEM file, that you unzipped/extracted, I'll attempt to add it directly to my arcview 10.0. What is your pc using to extract the data? Ken ... View more