group5e

For our purposes we've ditched trimble units for phones and bluetooth gps devices combind with Avenza PDFMaps... and have never looked back.

Well it's pretty obvious that ArcGIS Pro will be the new defacto desktop envvironment soon. As for the current ArcGIS desktop, I always leave 64-bit processing off. It usually alleviates about 95% of any potential problems. If I need background processing (which is rare), there is other software outside of the ESRI framework that will allow for that or I'll use a workstation at work precisely for this purpose... set it and leave it.

It's refreshing to hear someone else who feels that the 64 bit background processing isn't worth the trouble it creates. It's such a crappy implementation in the desktop environment.

All versions have bugs... all versions will eventually give the 999999 error with no explanation. Its really up to you with respect to what toolboxes you need or even if any of the new features are relevant to what you do.

If you are talking about the google maps layer then the answer is no as its a cached with the labels already added I believe. If its imagery layers, then yes. Just use the aerial layer and not the hybrid layer. Google terrain layers do not have labeling as well.

Excellent design and ease-of-use. Well done! Thanks for this.

Is this meant to be a direct competitor to the ESRI platform? I have to be honest,the cross-platform intrigues me, but then again so does anything that is non-esri.

As much as I hate to agree with this. I have to. At least from the environmental GIS sector. Just as an example I had to walk a GIS "professional" from the provincial government on how to export to shapefile from Civil3D the other day. It makes you wonder.

It depends on whether or not your job market requires it. I'm in Canada and its relatively a non-issue if you have already proven track record. I don't recommend taking it in Canada unless you have extra money to burn. I have seen no benefit to the professional accreditation I received from ESRI in the job market here. The other issue is that if a company is asking for that accredation, usually they want it up-to-date. That means you will have to keep retaking it with every major new release (as the exams are tied to major releases). At the end of the day, your proven skills and who you know are much more relevant than a paid accreditation. I mean, I guess if all things are equal between candidates at the end of the day, it might get you the job. As far as exam preparation goes, I believe there used to be some old course materials on this website at one point. You can do a search for that. Other than that, look at sample questions and take the free course here: https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/57630431851d31e02a43ee38/esri-technical-certification:-sample-questions-for-arcgis-desktop-associate/ It will give you an indication on how questions will be asked and what to expect. Be aware that the professional exam is much more technically inclined and specific. I've taken that particular exam and there are some tricky questions. Personally, I don't think its worth the money and isn't an industry standard here.

Is it not even showing the xml at its specified web address? Or is it just not showing it when accessed through the viewer?

This is a very very broad question. It really depends on what you will be using it for. When starting out I start out with only 2 major questions: 1) What functionality do I need? Less is more. Too many web mapping apps are loaded with almost too much functionality. It's a challenge making something that is robust functionally and intuitive to use at the same time. Many of the templates you will use will only have 50% of what you will actually need and the other 50% will be things you don't need/want. This includes security. This also includes determining whether or not users will connect through a mobile device to your app as well as a PC (this changes a lot of things). Things like User vs. Administrator functionality need to be considered, target audience, large-scale multi-user editing requiring enterprise dbms, etc... Open source vs. properietary? 2) What back-end will I use to store and manage the data and what front-end will you use to deliver the data (i.e. Silverlight, HTML5, etc...) They each have their advantages and disadvantages and is usually determined by the functionality I need. There are still reasons to use Silverlight in some rare cases. They are tools to do the job, just like a hammer or wrench. I've seen some terrific Silverlight webGIS (our main company editor is still utilizing Silverlight due to the fact it can still do somethings our staff rely on, that something like HTML5 cannot). On the reverse, I've seen some terrible HTML5 webGIS applications as well. Although I do strongly urge most people to stay away from Silverlight due to the obvious fact that its not supported by a lot of new browsers as well as UI issues it tends to have. There are no real "best practices" for what to put on a user's site because it's dependent directly on what the user will be doing with it. For example at our office, we like everything minimalist and this means no scale bars, scale text, etc... on the map (these only show up if the user wants them to from the toolbar or in a print layout). Our staff want maximum imagery and no "filler". We use regional and local projections (i.e. MTM or UTM zones) and not generic Mercator projections as we need good measurements with little distortion. We do NOT like to use cloud storage (this is different obviously for other businesses). We put lots of effort into creating good printing templates for reports (this is something that is really really neglected I find on web GIS apps). I mean I guess you could say north arrow, scalebar, print, export, legend etc... but those aren't really best practices that are related to WebGIS as they apply to all cartographic products. Things like heat maps, cluster mapping etc are often used incorrectly. In order to use this type of mapping you really need a nice amount of representative data. Having a heat map generated from say 20 points over a large national area is relatively useless. I don't recommend these things unless your data is good enough to support it. Web GIS applications are often created with what looks like the intended purpose of fully replacing a desktop environment and I strongly think this is a recipe for disaster because its impossible to do that. I see a lot of Geocortex solutions do this and a lot of it is just screen "bloatware" (its a great product in the right circumstances though). Consider these adjectives: - intuitive - responsive - quick - easy - simple - comprehensible - stream-lined If your application can meet most of these, then you are on your way. Of course, the application is only 1/2 of the package. The data is the other 1/2. If the data isn't properly prepped, etc for use on the web or in your application then your awesome application will run slower as it struggles with the loading of the data. When you say it is for commercial use, do you mean you will be using it to sell products on it commercially (i.e. such as an air photo library), or do you mean it will be used by "Company X" as a generic viewer for their staff at work?

ESRI pricing everyone out except fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies... In other news, the grass is wet...

The terrific thing about this software isn't necessarily google imagery, but rather when you pair it with something like mobac or sasplanet. You can pretty much automate tile creation for a service and have it simultaneously served up by the portable map server. This is terrific with sasplanet when for example you have a REST service that needs an referer in order to work. Download the tiles in sasplanet, then they appear in the service that you created in portable map server. If anyone knows how to add a referer directly into a portable map service, I'm all ears xD.

Thanks for the response. I've solved the photo issue. Turns out Geocortex doesn't add the final "/" at the end of the IMG tag. I feel pretty silly there haha. However the other issue regarding the data link to a specific Microsoft Access database is still not showing. Interestingly enough, I have other links going to other queries in the exact same database and they are functioning superbly.

Hello and I am almost finished completing a GIS application using Geocortex Essentials with the silverlight viewer template and have a couple of questions for anyone who is experienced. 1. When creating a Feature Description my photos will not show up. I've had my photos in a virtual directory for a previous flex application we've ran for a couple of years now and have had no issues. In fact, when putting in a simple request such as <img src> in the editor but not in the mapping application (just the html code does). The Geocortex manual explicitly states that feature descriptions support images. 2. Simple ole db connections that were working the previous day tend to disappear with a server reboot or the following day. Very strange. The connections are all 100% correct and have been verified numerous times. I am hosting the database files so permissions and locations haven't changed. If anyone can shed some light on some potential fixes that would be great!

So, correct me if I'm wrong but.... ESRI has created ArcGIS Pro as an additional software to ArcMap in order to address needs that should be included in the original software. Wonder if the current software design won't allow certain changes and that's why they are implementing yet another piece of software. Workflow from ESRI (if they had their way).... ArcPad -> ArcGIS Desktop -> ArcGIS Pro -> ArcGIS Server -> GeoPortal. So instead of reducing the workflow to make it more streamlined for GIS professionals... they are introducing more potential steps... Why the hell do we need another production level software to go along with ArcMap?? FIX THE PROBLEMS IN ARCMAP PLEASE AND STOP SCREWING AROUND! After 13 years of ESRI (products, going to conferences, etc...) all I can see is what's called a "Kansas City Shuffle"... You look right, while they go left.

Hello everyone, Don't do very much remote sensing work at all so I have to ask, which imagery would you select for vegetation interpretation and why? I will be using the IR band. Geoeye-1 Pleiades WorldView-2 Assuming the cloud cover is not a factor.

GIS is such a young science. I'll have a beer for the man that made my career possible .

Yup. Unfortunately it is industry standard. Most of our stuff is in file geodatabase format. It does have its conveniences and advantages too. I guess I just want something to work as intended as opposed to having to find another solution all the time when paying that much money.

Why should you have to? ESRI should support this format. Sorry, being facetious! In truth though, you are right. This is what you will have to do.

I want to buy ArcGIS 10.2 products... I really do. But I just can't bring myself to march to the bosses office and explain why we need this release because the fact is we don't. ESRI has managed to take a product with hardly any changes of significance and roll into a new version instead of an update. Instead of focusing on the multitude of problems that have plagued 10.1 throughout its lifecycle, they've decided to not fix the product and build on it even more. They haven't addressed (among other things): The 1000's of bugs and errors that crop up all the time. I have keep error journals so I know what to do next time something happens because the ESRI help is usually pretty vague or doesn't work. ESRI support? I am my own "ESRI Support". Outdated and clunky interface. Mediocre KML/KMZ support compared to other geospatial software. Better CAD support within ArcMap (it's poor to average at best still) Better production quality maps (i.e. not having to resort to Illustrator for most of the work). Poor GPS support. Although GPX is a standard, what about the other multitudes of formats that are used? Its clear that although ArcGIS bills itself as a one-stop solution for GIS needs, it isn't. The bottom line is that most people still need another "go-to" program that will do the things that ArcGIS fails to do. Want better KML/KMZ support... gotta use GlobalMapper (or something equivalent). Geoprocessing task failing all the time.... gotta use QGIS (or something equivalent). Want a nicer looking map because ESRI's production quality sucks... gotta use Illustrator. GPS files not being handled properly... gotta go convert it in another software and then bring into Arc... wait a minute... might as well use GlobalMapper again. ESRI is supposedly the Mercedes-Benz of GIS software... so why is it driving like a mini-van? More and more I find myself thinking "I might as well use (x) program because ArcGIS will just be a hassle...". I've been an ESRI user since ArcGIS 3.2 and I still remember those days fondly. The days when you had to save your work every minute because a dreaded Dr. Watson error might crop up... Not much has changed except that there are now more errors. Its almost like the presence of ESRI online-help is an excuse to have all these errors in their software. Someone needs to tell ESRI that sometimes less is more. That's my rant for the day. Thank you to anyone who chose to read it and I'm sorry if it was long-winded. Just don't get me started on ArcGIS Server or ArcPad software... holy crap... I need a panic room!

You can download the LocalTiles Toolbox. I find it works great as it downloads geotiffs of the screen at the scale you desire. Just ensure that you set your full map extent to the size of area you want to download. Then those geotiffs can all be combined into a mosaic or raster dataset. http://arcpadteam.blogspot.no/2010/08/create-local-map-tiles.html However... (there is always a however with ArcGIS it seems) it is not as efficient as GlobalMapper.

I wonder when they are going to revamp their interface? It seems that they may soon be heading in that direction. I would also like more detail about the *new* capabilities of ArcGIS 10.2. I have 10.1 and still have to use other software in conjunction with ArcGIS to get the job done sometimes... and I shouldn't when we pay close to $7,000...

Yes, I've found countless issues with ArcGIS 10.1. Here's what I would do based on my own experience as there are tons of things that could affect performance: 1) Clear the results from the results tab. These stored 'results' can cause ArcGIS to take a long time in loading. 2) If you have a lot of toolboxes, only load the ones you need. I've had countless issues with Production Mapping and ArcHydro toolboxes in the past. 3) Consider using mosaic datasets if you need to have lots of imagery in your table of contents. Also, ArcGIS tends to handle GeoTiffs (even though they are larger) better than compressed imagery such as ecw's due to external pyramid creation. 4) If the rasters are located on a network, then try putting them on your local drive and then loading them into ArcMap. I try not to work on large datasets over the network if possible. I copy it over when I'm done. 5) If your toolbars look like a CAD workspace, then you should probably streamline the amount of tools you actively display. 6) Delete your "normal.mxt" as a last resort. 7) Turn off any antivirus software. 8) Ensure that all service packs are up-to-date and all patches have been applied. Often, these are bugs that are ironed out in service packs. 9) If you are trying to load online imagery into ArcGIS, ensure that caching is enabled in the properties tab of the imagery (if possible). 10. If you don't need to use ArcGIS Online then rename the ArcGISConnectionBin.exe to ArcGISConnectioBin.exe.BAK. You will not be able to use bing imagery or any other type of online service when you do this. 11.) If you have both internal and discrete graphics cards on your computer, try disabling one and using the other and see if that helps. I've had issues with my nvidia card before with ArcGIS. 12.) Ensure that windows 7 is completely up-to-date as well as all your hardware. 13.) Try to repair the install from the disc or image you've used. 14.) Wipe out the program, remove the registry entries and start fresh. Curious, when you say "using many rasters" do you mean types other than ecw or actually using lots of rasters in a map (i.e. having 50 raster datasets in one map document)? If the latter is the case, then this is definitely going to slow you down and you should create a mosaic dataset or at the very least, merge them all into one single dataset. ArcMap 10.1 is very very fickle. I've had to delete my normal template more times than I can count, whereas in ArcMap 10 I rarely had to do it.