Top Three ArcGIS Extensions ESRI Should Have Included by Default

The main software that I use at work everyday is without a doubt ArcGIS. I use to to do mapping, data management, Analysis and just good old fashion data clean-up and migration. That said, ArcGIS includes a whole host of tools but some of them are hard to find or simply none existent. When I get into this situation there are three main utilities that I use to fill the gap.

Spatial Technique’s ET Geo Wizards- I’ve been using this Extension since the ArcView Days. The main features are quite staggering and I’ve used many of the tools from the various functional areas over the years. Many of the functions in this extension are free but if you need more you can grab a single license for $195.

Data East- Xtools Pro- Xtools Started out as a free extension and then went to a Pro Version a number of years ago. Xtools have many of the same functionality as the ET Geo wizards but has a few more. You can buy it for $211.88 if you need to go beyond the free functions. Some of my favorite tools include; Auto Save MXD, Multi- delete Fields, Table Restructure and a few others. Check out the tool descriptions.

Spatial Ecology- Hawth’s Analysis Tools for ArcGIS- As the name suggests the tools are for performing analysis. The best thing is that these are FREE. I have relied on the Count Points in Polygon Tool Many times as well as Polygon in Polygon Analysis, Zonal Statistics and quite a few of the table tools. Have a look at the toolset and their descriptions here.

Please note that I do not derive any income of any sort from these companies neither am I affiliated with them.

Installing WordPress locally via XAMPP and MAMP.

I’ve been wanting to install WordPress and on a server of some sort just to play around with it and see what can be done. I know many people out there use wordpress to build their websites and I wanted to see how this would work so I made up my mind to dive in. As usual I fired up google and hopped around to see how this could be done. I found out that many hosting companies actually have a software in their control panels that allow you to do this pretty easily and I tried this out with one of the websites that I manage. However, I didn’t want to put anything on a server perse but set out to do this locally first so I can mess with WordPress itself w/out worrying about someone else coming across it on the web. I soon found out that you can install it locally both on Windows XP and using XAMPP which I was interested in doing for work and on Mac OS using MAMP (You can use XAMPP on Mac OS X as well but I found MAMP easier to work with) plus you can use a little dashboard widget to make sure your services are running. I used these instructions for installing MAMP and WordPress on my Mac and had no trouble at all. For the Windows machine at work I used the instructions here. After doing all of this I decided to scrap the one at work because I didn’t want to get into any issues of security with the IT folks. Although I work in the IT Dept. I’m on the GIS side of things so I decided that I didn’t want to get my hands slapped for messing with security or at least having anyone think that I’m messing with security. For now its running at home where I have a bit more time to test and play at will.

Asbestos Removal

I came in to work earlier today to find yellow construction tape and a nice little sign that said danger on the door I usually use to enter the office. After wondering what the heck was going on I remembered that the boiler downstairs was being replaced. I found the sign interesting actually, coz all this time we’ve been walking by said boiler room which houses our heating and cooling unit and all this time it had asbestos in there. Nice he sign even said cancer and lung disease hazard. So if I get any of those diseases I guess I know who to blame huh!
Other than that it was a pretty ordinary day.

NYS Geospatial Summit

I’m still a bit tired from from attending the NYS Geospatial Summit yesterday. Truth is I didn’t get much sleep the night before and I had to wake up early and drive 42 miles to the Welch-Allyn Lodge in Skaneateles Falls. I must say that it was a beautiful setting for a beautiful subject… The speakers for the summit included a wide array of folks with Jim Lorenz (Virtual Earth Sales and Marketing) from Microsoft going first and Michael Jones (CTO of Google Earth) finishing up a bit after 5 PM. I took lots of notes that I’ve yet to transfer but here are some first impressions from the summit without getting into too much details First off, the top three speakers that I enjoyed in order were:

1. Derrick Crandall, American Recereation Coalition
2. Adena Schutzberg, Directions Magazine
3. Erin Aigner, The New York Times

Derrick started off with a quote at the beginning of his presentation that both made me laugh and think at the same time: “this is not 3D rendering, this is the real thing” (after showing some nice pictures of the outdoors). He spent a great deal of time informing us that the average child today spent 6.5 hours in front of a computer and told us about some of the challenges and successes that his organization faces in getting children and people in general to participate in the outdoors. He informed us of an eye-opening book “Last Child in the Woods.” I suggest checking out the outdoor recreation website for planning some fun outdoors this summer with friends and family. The recreation.gov website also have some interesting info and links (You can even reserve campsites at national parks). Derrick definately challenged me personally to take some more time away from the computer screen and enjoy the outdoors. We have some beautiful parks here in Upstate, NY.

Adena gave us a good overview of where we have come from in the geospatial agency and some ideas of where we are going. I won’t rehash here because she covered a whole outline. In short, I remembered five trends that she gave (w/out my notes):

1. Data is everywhere and usable
2. Maps are fast and exciting
3. 3D is everywhere for everyone so we can all go flying
4. The public has become more data and map aware, or smarter about data and maps (there were some contention on this point)
5. New geospatial companies are starting to pop-up overnight

She also mentioned Google Timeline and Map View which I haven’t explored before today. Adena also made some sobering remarks at the end of her presentation to the Geospatial Professionals in the audience. She basically, said that if current geospatial trends continue there will be fewer Geospatial pros and more geospatial users in our society. This would mean most of us in the room could be out of a job in the not too distant future but as a geospatial pro I’m a bit more optimistic about the future. I think we will find ways of reinventing ourselves or just grow in new ways.

Erin’s talk was pretty cool in my opinion. Not only does she make some nice looking maps but she makes them for the New York Times. I have to admit that I don’t currently have a subscription but now I’m looking forward to her maps in the latest copy (I plan on going out for a little walk and getting one on Monday). Honestly, I’ve never really thought that much about the maps in newspapers before. I never stopped to think who made them and the process of getting them there. I often though someone at the paper just bout the maps off a company or got it for free or just used it to support the particular story. Now I realize, due to Erin’s talk that there are professional cartographers who are employed by these Newspapers to acquire data, manipulate it cartographically to support the story and that they are under the same time crunch as the reporters in some case more of a time crunch. The worst thing is that sometimes they work all day on a map and it gets cut from the story… Youch! It was a very eye-opening presentation and I must say that Erin is especially skilled at what she does and I’ll be picking up the New York Times on Monday to see that map that she mentioned.

One more thing before I get my relaxation on… I noticed that Jim Lorenz’s slides packed as much info on each slide as was possible. They looked an awful lot like Bill Gates’ slides. After reading this article on the Presentation Zen Blog, I have to say that this was “tickling me” the whole time I was sitting there. His overall presentation was good though an I thought that he had one of the most informative presentation in terms of what is company is doing geospatially. He also introduced us to photosynth (need Vista or XP to try it, Mac Users can view videos here) and dropped a bit of surprise about ArcGIS 9.3. In contrast, Michael Jones from Google grabbed his MacBook Pro, plopped i on the stand and raced through his presentation. It was a good presentation but he was talking so fast i could not understand half of what he was saying. To my delight he used Keynote instead of Powerpoint for his presentation and his slides were pleasing to the eye not over-crowded with info. He showed some interesting mash-ups and people were making with Google maps (including the one in the picture above - a mash-up of the lat/long coordinates that Angelina Jolie has tattooed on her arm which corresponds to the birthplace of each of her children). he then moved on to Street View which I had just showed off to a co-worker in my office on Thursday. There were at most three of us in he audience who had seen it before his presentation. I head about it on a blog I read on account of some concerns about privacy issues. I liked Adena’s comment about privacy something like “we have none so get over it and move on. ” There were a few jokes about some guy who was using the highway as a public restroom (complements of Street view). One demo that strucked me was “Eyes on Darfur” if you haven’t seen it yet give it a look. It will open your eyes and perhaps your heart as well.

All in all it was an interesting and informative summit and I’m glad that I woke up early in he morning and drove all the way there. I also met some people in and outside my area that I haven’t met before and I’m glad to have had the chance to attend this year. The $75 was well worth it and I’ve used the wine glasses we received as gifts more than a few times since then. I would recommend this summit to anyone in the NYS area in the geospatial profession for next year. Your brain will be swimming with all that information afterwards but its worth it to exercise the ole noggin once in a while.

ArcGIS 9.2 Service Packs Now Available

I’ve been checking the ESRI page everyday since I first heard that ArcGIS 9.2 Service Pack 2 was to be released on December 18th. Alas! It was delayed until after Christmas… Earlier today I went to check and there they were. I downloaded the first of the three because that’s all I had time for today and applied the patch to 2 machines so far. All seems to be working well. I’m wondering if its safe to install IE 7 now (seems to work fine on my Boss’s machine. I’ll have to download the ArcSDE & ArcIMS patch later the ArcGIS Desktop patch was 44 MB. Quite a bit to push over our network. Here are the links to the patch. Go get em! ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 SP 1, ArcSDE 9.2 SP 1, ArcIMS 9.2 SP1

The Case of the Missing Usability Enhancements in ArcGIS 9.2…

Let me start off by commending ESRI on the fine job they have done with the new usability enhancements in ArcGIS 9.2. That said, there are a few more that I would like to see…

That display vs. selection tab blunder- where am I?

Maybe its just me, but I find it a bit difficult to tell when editing a layer if the selection tab is active or the display tab is active (especially I have gobs of other layers in the TOC). I know that the selection tab is the one with the yellow icons by the Layers list at the top but when you have a tons of layers and you are down in the middle of the layers list its hard to tell which tab is active exactly without having to look at the bottom or the left. This results in me clicking in the display tab thinking that I’m specifying which layers are selectable and clicking in the selection tab thinking that I’m turning layers on/ off. I’ve caught myself doing this more than a few times now to blame it on the interface. Here is what I think ESRI can do to make things easier for us payin customers: Make the contents of the two tabs visually different. Simply making the boxes in the selectable layers tab bolder or a different color would help to reduce these common mishaps.

The Topology Editing Options won’t stay put after closing my MXD

While using the modify edge command to move several feature classes via Map Topology I notice that the selected nodes are way too large and usually covers over myproperty lines when zoomed in closely. To mimimize this problem, I’ve developed a habit of changing the topology elements symbology to .30 for selected nodes and .001 for selected edges. I do my edits, save the changes and the MXD file and finish up for the day. Next day I open said MXD again to do more edits… select the modify edge tool to move some more nodes and edges and notice that when I select a node its large again (didn’t I change this the last time?) I go to Editor—-> Options—-> Topology Elements Symbology and low and behold the nodes have reset themselves to 5 and the edges are back to 2. I set them back to .30 and .001 next day I have to set them back again. Next day after that, its OK, I get .30 and .001 I’m happy OK maybe now it will stick, next day we are playing the 5/2 game again. I’m unhappy about this, what a time waster.

A minor enhancement request oh beloved programmers

I like the new calculate geometry tool, I have to admit that my old calculator has gotten little attention since I upgraded to 9.2 almost a month ago. There are two ways to make this tool better. The first way is to include the ability to use a default calculation option. For example, I mainly calculate polygons so I use Area/ Acres US. I notice that the calculator remembers the map projection why can’t it remember that I like to calculate areas in Acres US? There should be some kind of option to specify this so I don’t have to pick it from the list every-time. Also would be nice if it saved these default between sessions. The second request is to put a button on the toolbar to click on a polygon in the main ArcMap window instead of having to go to tables everytime. I thought that this was doable from a demo I saw but I can’t calculate the geometry for a selected feature w/out going to the table. Odd… I think that you can do a graphic but not n actual feature… Still have to look into this one, have been so swamped with work I haven’t the proper time to check out all of the new stuff yet.

ArcGIS Server 9.2 Upgraded Thanks to ESRI!

ArcGIS Server (via ESRI)

I was very excited a couple of days ago to find out that although we weren’t one of the folks that won the ArGIS Server Stratus Grant. We did however, receive an ESRI ArcGIS Server Software grant. This grant allowed us to upgrade our ArcGIS Server Standard to ArcGIS Server Advanced free of charge (minus the time spent wrting and sending off the grant). This is what we needed to do our project in the first place so I was very excited. I got receieved the new codes in my inbox just yesterday. Its funny, I did not want to spend the time applying but I sure I’m glad I did. The praying also helped esp. since we tuned it in at the last possible minute.   Now we can proceed with our project (more on that later) as planned esp. since we were successful in obtaining another grant to offset the consulting and other fees.

No Stratus Grant for US

I found out that we didn’t get the grant that we applied for today. Congratulations to all the other places that did receive it. We haven’t gotten our rejection letter yet I found out by going to the grants website after my Boss informed me that he didn’t received any word one way or the other. It would have been exciting scrambling around to get the project done in six months and we were looking forward to it but guess we have to try again somewhere else or put the project on the shelf for a later time. The project has to get done some way or the other so its just a matter of coming up with the funds to do it.

Almost Done

So I finally finished installing the last of the programs on my machine today. Everything works except for the ArcGIS Pictometry Link tool. This allows you bring up an image in EFS by clicking on a spot on your map. I use this for exporting an image mainly now this doesn’t exactly work with ArcGIS 9.2. I’m wondering when ESRI will release a patch so I can install IE 7 right now they say stay away and IE 6 is killing me… We aren’t suppose to install other Browsers at work (don’t even get me started on why we can’t install Firefox). Anyway, all is well except for our email program which has been a constant pain since I laid eyes on it anyway. I think that we are switching next year to a better email client that will allow us to have to-do lists, calendars, archiving and all that other kind of stuff I took for granted at my previous place of employment. I’m just glad that my computer is back up and running. Now I just have to work out a few quirks and start churning out those surveys…

Hard Drive Reformatting Time

I spent the better part of my afternoon today reformatting the hard drive of my PC at work. Although I haven’t reformatted a HD in a year or so since I don’t have a Windows PC at home anymore I was surprised at how much I remembered. It wasn’t as daunting as I thought it would be and everything worked like a charm. Its one of the easier reformats I’ve done mainly because the HP computers came with a restore CD that you stick in and it walks you through the process. The only thing that I didn’t like was that the utility only allow you 2 hard drive partition choices Fat 32 @32xxx or NTFS at 76xxx my HD was 80 GB and I wanted three smaller partitions. I created the three partitions and finished up the rest in the Windows XP environment. I made sure that I got that antivirus on there really quickly in fact I got some paranoid-about this I disabled my network card and forgot to enable it after I installed the Novell Client which meant that I couldn’t find any of my servers. I figured it out soon enough and now all seems to be well. Tomorrow I have to reinstall the rest of my software oh all the work… put in the CDs wait for Windows to fatten up my registry again. I am amazed at how much faster the system is without all those programs on it though…