ESRI’s ArcPy… A VBAish Replacement? Maybe…

I haven’t done much, actually nothing, in the way of development over the last year at SRK.  Last week at the ESRI UC there was an awful lot of talk about Python, and ArcPy.  I didn’t actually attend any ArcPy sessions, other than watching a bit of one demo in the showcase area.  However, one of my colleagues did take in an ArcPy session and was quite excited about, and what it has to offer.

I have done a considerable amount a VBA in the Autodesk products, and moved onto the .NET world when VBA was deprecated.  I do not consider my self a ‘heads-down’ developer, but more of a hacker/compiler/scripter, and I was not one of those people that could not leave VBA behind and complained to anyone who would listen that ESRI, Autodesk, <insert any company name licensing VBA), and Microsoft were pure evil for moving on from VBA.  There are a MANY reasons why it was time to move, the biggest being 64bit, but I’m not getting into that here.

Where am I going with this you ask?

Well, my first real exposure to Python + ArcPy this morning has me quite excited.  WRT to ESRI products at least, this is, and should be, a very viable replacement for VBA scripting.  As I was perusing the ArcPy help I saw a sample on how to Export a Map to PDF.  “Wow!” I thought, “this could save me A LOT of time if I could script it to process all MXDs in a given folder”  So, off I went and within an hour I had the script created and a GP Tool Dialog to allow the user to select the folder to process and generate PDFs for all of the MXDs in the selected folder.  I have to re-iterate, I had not touched or used Python or ArcPy previous to this endeavour.  It is a very easy to read and use scripting language that I can see a TON of use for.  I will be continuing to look for ways to automate processes via ArcPy.
The Python command line in the ArcGIS Products has Intellisense built-in, and anybody with VBA experience would catch on to the syntax in no time at all.

ESRI UC Wrap-up

Well, I’m back at home after a very early Saturday morning flight out of San Diego.  It always seems like a good idea to book these early flights to get home in good time, but I sure wasn’t thinking that when my alarm went off at 3:45am Saturday morning…

Friday was the final day at the ESRI UC, and I attended what turned out to be an ad-hoc combined session including: ‘Working with ArcGIS Online’, and ‘Authoring and Using Great Web Maps’.  These sessions were combined, and moved to a larger room, due to the standing room only offerings of these same sessions earlier in the week.  The session provided some useful information on the ArcGIS online offerings including ArcGIS Online for Organizations which looks very interesting.

Following this morning session was our SRK GIS meeting.  This meeting was one of the primary reasons for us attending the ESRI UC, and this meeting was an opportunity for us to gather and discuss a number of items wrt GIS within SRK.  We had a great meeting with many good ideas and suggestions brought forward and it was fun to discuss the exciting new developments everyone had seen during the week, and to hear how other offices are using GIS.  We have defined a number of ‘next steps’ to help move GIS forward within our organization.

All-in-all my first ESRI UC experience was a very good one.  It is similar in many ways to Autodesk University as far as technical user conferences go: there are some great sessions, and there are some so-so sessions.  The trick is to learn how to read between the lines of the session titles and short abstracts to determine the value of the session.  It was nice to catch-up with some former clients, to meet a lot of great people, and  it truly was incredible to to be at an event with one single focus…  GIS.

On a personal note, after our meeting I was able to take in a few of the sites down on the waterfront, including: USS Midway, and a San Diego Padres vs. San Francisco Giants ball game where I was able to see Tim Lincecum dominate the home team for a 6-1 Giants win.

Some photos from San Diego:


Until next time,
Take care.
Warren M

ESRI UC - Day 2 & 3

A couple days of very good sessions here in San Diego. The ArcGIS Server Performance and Scalabilty sessions yesterday provided valuable info wrt to testing and optimizing large scale implementations. Today I've taken in a couple JavaScript API sessions, and a Web Editing session.

I've been extremely impressed by how the ESRI Showcase area is setup in the exhibit hall. There are islands, and areas to sit down with a computer and discuss and try out every piece of technology available with ESRI personnel. You can also book a time or drop in to discuss your techical issues with the Tech Support team!

On the downside, its disappointing that coffee isn't even provided first thing in the morning... Good thing there are an abundance of 'insert well known brand here' coffee kiosks in the convention center.

ESRI UC - Day 1

So imagine my complete and utter surprise when I walked into the SDCC, where I thought I was going to know no-one except my SRK colleagues that I had yet to meet, and the first person I see is a fellow AU presenter Gordon Luckett of Arrow Geomatics! It is truly bizarre that in a sea of over 13,000 people, that I just happened to walk in that particular entrance, and Gord happened to be standing right there... All I can muster is bizarre!!!! I was great to catch up with Gord, and I'm sure we'll cross paths this week.

Anywho... As I mentioned previously, today was the Plenary Sessions to kick off the conference. Jack Dangermond discussed his GIS Vision for the coming year, and years, followed by various technical demonstrations. Highlights of the sessions included:

• ArcGIS innovations including new features of the upcoming 10.1
• ArcGIS Online improvements
• 64 bit support
• Improved LiDAR support
• Geodatabase administration tools

I managed to track down my SRK colleagues and finally meet some of the people I have had communications with over the last 11 months.

Keynote speakers included:

• Timothy T. Schilling and Michele Adesir-Schilling discussing the Green Living Project, which enabled Rwandan coffee farmers to produce a better quality coffee bean to supply the international specialty coffee market.
• Jacqueline McGlade, director of the European Environement Agency, discussed the 'one degree' change in temperature, and how it will impact the earth.

Well, I need to figure out my sessions for tomorrow, so until next time, take care.

Warren

ESRI UC 2011

Well it's funny how almost 3 months can get away from a person... Oh well, as I've said in the past, life gets in the way...

I am excited to currently be in San Diego where I will be attending the 2011 edition of the annual ESRI User Conference this week. ESRI UC is truly an international conference with over 13,000 attendees from over 120 countries around the world.

Tomorrow kicks off with the Plenary sessions, and then followed up with a few days of a wide range of sessions including: technical workshops, Special Interest Group meetings, vendor presentations, and much more.

We (SRK Consulting) are also using this event an opportunity for some of the GIS leaders within our organization to gather and have a discussion on a wide variety of topics WRT GIS within SRK. I'm really looking forward to meeting ,and learning from, all of my colleagues from around the world in attendance.

ArcGIS Printing and Google Chrome browsers

I know, I know... it's been a while... no excuses other than, 'life'.


So, over the last number of days I've been noticing my ArcGIS locking up when I would goto print. Now, if this happening once in a while I probably wouldn't have given it much thought, however, this seemed to be happening quite frequently as of late. I would usually just kill the arcmap process, and try again.


The last couple of times this occured, I happened to notice (before I ended task) that my Google Chrome browser would locked up as well when the print was executed from ArcGIS. Odd... oh well, kill both processes, and re-try.


This last time I noticed that during this 'lock-up' in ArcGIS, if I killed the Chrome process, voila, the print dialog would appear. Ok... now this tells me there is a direct link between the two. A quick Google search, and it appears I'm not the only one experiencing this.


I will continue to do some more troubleshooting and see if this can be resolved.

Until next time,

Take care.


Warren M

ArcGIS TRACE

As far as GIS/CAD integration goes, I have long stated you should choose the best tool for the job you are trying to do. As such, I have held the belief that if you are doing pure vector data creation/design work, a 'CAD' tool is probably better suited, and vice versa, if you are performing spatial analysis, high end cartographic output a 'GIS' tool is probably your tool of choice.

Over the last number of years I've been talking about how the lines are being blurred between these two camps based on recent advancements in many software tools. One tool that I've found to be extremely powerful in the Arc* products is the Trace command, and I have to admit that some of my beliefs are being challenged a little in light of some recent work I've been doing.

For example, let's say I'm working on a watershed analysis, and creating boundaries to represent the watershed. Now I'm not talking about an automated analysis procedure here, I'm taking about simply digitizing by evaluating contour elevations and other known features.

Consider the following graphic. The 2 red lines represent a water shed boundary, and of course the blue are represents a water body. Now that I have defined the watershed boundaries, I would like to create closed area's to be able to extract an overall area of the watershed.

In the past, I likely would have used a CAD tool for this, and through a series of polyline editing, trimming, cutting, etc, I would have come up with the polygon boundary along the water body edge.

However... this would be a great application of the Trace tool, to 'trace' along existing features.

With the Trace command enabled, you simply click on a feature you want to trace along, and move the cursor along that feature and voila. You can even select a different feature to trace along just by clicking on that feature to set it as the class to trace.

This would be a very handy tool for the 'CAD' vendors to implement into their suite of tools. Hint, hint, hint...

Warren