Add Custom Icons to ArcGISExplorer 2500

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09-22-2014 08:02 AM
BillSchroeder
New Contributor III

First off, I typed "add custom icons to arcexplorer" in search and found nothing, so if there's other threads on this topic, please forgive me.

Second, what a great tool for people to use! Thank you ESRI!

Now down to the bones.

I've created custom icons 64 x 64 with transparent backgrounds, saved as "name of image".png and have no problem loading them one at a time to maps.

I can set them up on an offline tablet (surface pro 2), send a crew out with the tablet in airplane mode, and they can use landmarks to put a fire hydrant icon smack dab as close as most gps units can place it. They can comment on it, then create a folder for this new placemark, share the folder as either a layer package or a kmz file, put it on a thumbdrive, and voila, I can bring it up on my ArcMap, and use it to update my information, and have the icon as close as it can be until our engineering department goes out and shoots the exact spot with their gps unit.

This is working great for us! We don't have to spend money on 4g or anything for the tablets we use in the field, which means we can afford to pursue this on a large scale. Thanks for this great tool, ESRI!

But, My problem is, the custom icons are only custom for the map.nmf they are physically associated with. (with which they are associated, or whatever) No problem here. they work great! But I want them to be available specific to the program, not the map.

How can I make the custom icons available to all maps? Or can I?

Before answering, I am running build ArcMap 10.2.1.3497 and have no extra modules, etc whatever added, and want to know how to get these in explorer desktop USING explorer desktop. I say this because in searching google, I saw what looked like a way to use ArcMap's capabilities to create new styles or something, and my setup was not at all like what was mentioned in the thread I was looking at.

So, can I take the custom icons I've added to ArcExplorer Desktop 2500 on a windows surface pro 2 and make them available for each and every new map I might want to create on my surface pro without having to add each ... icon ... one ... at ... a ... time?

We want our guys in the field to be able to use this new tool to its fullest capability. Besides, there's hydrant, valve, water tank, etc etc etc icons for explorer, and I've yet to find add on icons anywhere.

Also, I've seen where you can write a script to give folders custom icons, but this has nothing to do with that.

Then there's also another problem: anything added to a custom icon, once placed, as far as comments seems lost when the icon is moved to arcmap. I try to look at any information (hydrant number, pressure, flow, was it 10 feet from the black dog or the oak tree, etc etc etc) is nowhere to be found. Can this be remedied in future builds? I've tried it in lpk and kmz files, and can't find any information. If these would carry over any comments made, it would be super helpful, thank you.

Thank you all, I hope I've explained adequately what I am trying to accomplish and am posting this in the right place.

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MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

Bill,

Yes you can, but it will require updating files in the install folder on each computer.

In the Explorer (x86)\Styles folder, add your icon as a .PNG image to the SymbolImages folder.  (Explorer uses 64x64 for image size, if you use larger images and lots of them, the gallery will be slower to load.)

addexplorersymbols.png

for Example I will add this image "happy.png" for use as a symbol.

happy.png

Save the image in the SymbolImages folder.  In this case will put it in the "Health" folder.

symbolimagehealth.png

Now I am working with English language, so I will update the ExplorerSymbols.xml file to reference the image in the Symbolimages\Health folder.

nameidpath.png

<Symbol SymbolType="Marker" Name="happy" Category="Health" Id="happyMarker" Size="25">

      <SymbolSource Type="Image" Location="Install" Path="SymbolImages\Health\happy.png" />

</Symbol>

The File contains information for each symbol.  In the above example, I Named the Symbol happy and placed it in the Health category.  You must give it a unique ID as well as updating the Path to the symbol.  (Note: the path does not support using a URL)

symbolgallery.png

For the second part of your question.  When an Explorer user creates a layer package from a note.  The note title is put in a Title Field and the body of the note is put in a Popup field.

popupfields.png

When you open in ArcMap it is represented as:

popfiedls.png

You users can use the Note Title to convey some information, and it is just a string in the field.  In the body case, some style is included to account for HTML that may have been in the body of the note.  In your case it is straight text.  to make it a little easier to deal with, you could add a new field and calculate it equal to the popup field, and use some vbscript or python to strip out the style information.

Here is an example using vbscript.

calculatefiedl.png

k = InStr( [Popup], "</style>" )

l = k + 7

totallength = Len( [Popup] )

bodycount = totallength - l

bodytext = Right( [Popup], bodycount )

vbscriptcode.png

Mark

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16 Replies
MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

Bill,

Yes you can, but it will require updating files in the install folder on each computer.

In the Explorer (x86)\Styles folder, add your icon as a .PNG image to the SymbolImages folder.  (Explorer uses 64x64 for image size, if you use larger images and lots of them, the gallery will be slower to load.)

addexplorersymbols.png

for Example I will add this image "happy.png" for use as a symbol.

happy.png

Save the image in the SymbolImages folder.  In this case will put it in the "Health" folder.

symbolimagehealth.png

Now I am working with English language, so I will update the ExplorerSymbols.xml file to reference the image in the Symbolimages\Health folder.

nameidpath.png

<Symbol SymbolType="Marker" Name="happy" Category="Health" Id="happyMarker" Size="25">

      <SymbolSource Type="Image" Location="Install" Path="SymbolImages\Health\happy.png" />

</Symbol>

The File contains information for each symbol.  In the above example, I Named the Symbol happy and placed it in the Health category.  You must give it a unique ID as well as updating the Path to the symbol.  (Note: the path does not support using a URL)

symbolgallery.png

For the second part of your question.  When an Explorer user creates a layer package from a note.  The note title is put in a Title Field and the body of the note is put in a Popup field.

popupfields.png

When you open in ArcMap it is represented as:

popfiedls.png

You users can use the Note Title to convey some information, and it is just a string in the field.  In the body case, some style is included to account for HTML that may have been in the body of the note.  In your case it is straight text.  to make it a little easier to deal with, you could add a new field and calculate it equal to the popup field, and use some vbscript or python to strip out the style information.

Here is an example using vbscript.

calculatefiedl.png

k = InStr( [Popup], "</style>" )

l = k + 7

totallength = Len( [Popup] )

bodycount = totallength - l

bodytext = Right( [Popup], bodycount )

vbscriptcode.png

Mark

BillSchroeder
New Contributor III

Thank you, Mark. I was certain there would be a way. I don't mind having to do it for each tablet, I'll just set up my standard set of custom icons, and a custom .xml file and keep it to use on all the tablets we'll be setting up.

Great job with concise information. I really appreciate that!

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BillSchroeder
New Contributor III

Aw heck yeah, it's even better than that.

I added a folder called Water and Sewer to SymbolImages, and put a green hydrant image in it and edited the .xml file like this:

<Symbol SymbolType="Marker" Name="Green Hydrant" Category="Water and Sewer" Id="GreenHydrantMarker" Size="25">

      <SymbolSource Type="Image" Location="Install" Path="SymbolImages\Water and Sewer\Green Hydrant.png" />

    </Symbol>

and put it all in my tablet, and voila, the new directory is in the program with the green hydrant right there where it's supposed to be.

Now I can get all my custom icons in there!

We've been using this tablet as a test and it is passing everything I can throw at it, now we've ordered another one and I'm going to set it up for one of our guys to take out in the field and use it.

This is great, now I can set up separate tablets for out pumps and tank guys, sewer guys, water guys, etc and they will all have exactly what icons they need for each situation.

As far as notation of new placemarks, it's sad that the information doesn't just carry over from explorer to arcmap without any extra work. Nothing that was entered in the pop up field at all makes it to arcmap.

All I see in popup when I extract .dbf from attributes is this:

<style>body { font-family:Arial; font-size:x-small; } h1 { font-family:Arial; font-size:x-large; } h2 { font-family:Arial; font-size:large; } h3 { font-family:Arial; font-size:medium; } h4 { font-family:Arial; font-size:small; } h5 { font-family:Arial; f

and yes, it just stops at ~; f after h5 on both. huh.

I'll play around with it, though, but that's a lot of stuff to deal with.

I wonder if there's any chance in version 2500 x there'll be a straight forward notation field that will remain intact when shared via lpk or kmz? sure would be nice.

anyway, you rock, thanks a ton!

*edit,

Of course when people bring the tablets in, I'll be collecting the layers they've placed on thumb drives, so it won't be a problem to have explorer open in one monitor and arcmap in another and look at the information in the pop up while I'm editing, if I ever have to, but I do hope someone with ESRI sees the need to have that field go into an attribute field named notes, perhaps with text format at perhaps 150 characters or something... or maybe have it customizable itself... for like text notes of x amount of characters, or numerical data, floating integers, etc, just like attributes for shapefiles are in arcmap. Sure would be useful if it worked that way in some future iteration...

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MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

Bill,

The popup field in the layer package has a length of 262144  so it should be more than enough to hold the contents of the note.  The note body only supports 32,608 typed characters.

Using ArcGIS Explorer I create a note add 32,608 characters, create a layer package and the resulting file geodatabase contains a Popup field with all 32,608 characters, plus the style tags.

I am not sure why your result is truncated.

I even tried creating a KML out of the note and using KML to layer, and viewing that in ArcMap showed all of the information as well.

I notice that your string is truncated at 255 characters.  Are you exporting to a shapefile?  if you are that would be the reason.  Shapefiles have a field length limit.

Mark

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BillSchroeder
New Contributor III

(allow me to preface all of this with "I'm taking the lpk file and opening it in ArcMap", the information is intact when migrating from one place to another opening it up in explorer)

I click Point, click where I want it to be, change word note to whatever reference I want, Hydrant R3-999, etc, then type in some description in the pop up field of whatever needs to be in there, maybe gpm static pressure, etc or anything else, then click okay. This leaves the dialogue up on screen.At this point, I can now (thank you) click on the pin and edit it to show one of my new icons.

Now I go to contents, right click on my new layer, and click share. I'm presented with map content, which only opens in arc explorer from all I can tell, Layer Package or KML (which is actually a KMZ file, but we won't quibble).

I have saved as each, and not gotten the map content to work in arc map, so that's a no go, but the other two - well you see above what happens.

As far as uploading maps, we'll stick with migrating them to tablets locally. Using shp files or even gdb files causes the maps to be stuck using only Explorer's symbols and styles, and this is not acceptable for the vast amount of information we're dealing with.

but I got custom icons!!!! woo hoo!!!

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MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

Just repeating what you wrote.

Create note.

r3note.png

Share as Layer Package and Add the Package back into ArcGIS Explorer.

R3package.png

Can you repeat the same?

And re-confirm that you are using ArcGIS Explorer 2500 or 2505?

Mark

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BillSchroeder
New Contributor III

The problem is, I'm taking these and putting them on ArcMap and that is what is truncating the notes, etc.

they're fine on other devices running explorer.

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MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

what version of ArcMap are you using?

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MarkBockenhauer
Esri Regular Contributor

just re-read, see that it is 10.2.1.  I will research it...