Latest Contributions by AmySmith3

Hi! We ended up using Python scripting outside of ArcMap and arcpy. ... View more

I need to do this for several thousand features. Is there a geoprocessing tool that will convert lines in batch? ... View more

Ah...  that geometric mean!  Not that I know of.  I'll have to do some checking.  For sure Dissolve doesn't have the option. Thanks! I'm sure it could be done with some Python scripting, but it would certainly be quicker and easier if a geoprocessing tool such as Dissolve provided that option. I thought it couldn't hurt to ask. 🙂 ... View more

You can input a Weight Field to the Mean Center tool -- is this what you mean? For more information, take a look at the "how it works" doc. Although the data I'm working with is spatial in nature, the statistical calculation (described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_mean) would not require using a feature's spatial information. For example, if performing a Dissolve, I would like to use the geometric mean (as opposed to arithmetic) as a merge rule. ... View more

Try the Mean Center tool Thanks for the suggestion! Do you know if I would be able to use the Mean Center tool to calculate geometric mean (as opposed to arithmetic mean) for a field that contains numeric values (such as integers or floats), rather than the shape's geographic coordinates? Take care, Amy ... View more

Desktop has the ability to send the file to the Server, and the service with a few lines of Python code could unzip the contents of the file to a local directory, perform some operations, then zip up the output. A very belated thank you for your response! I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of some help documentation on returning an output file to the user. Thanks, Amy ... View more

The workspace input parameter isn't supported with a GP Service (as a parameter). We do support "strings" though as you pointed out. At 10.1 we map the unsupported parameter to either string (user defined) or hardcoded it (constant). It sounds like you're consuming the Service inside Desktop? When you open the tool dialog inside ArcMap you just have a string box to put a path in. I can't envision another way around this as the Service now has STRING as input. You could write a little script tool and distribute that to your Desktop users. The tool would take a folder as input and pass the string representation of that to the Service. Or if you're using a web application that you've built - you can build in a file open dialog and just get the value of that and pass it to the service. Thanks for your response! Yes, the service would be consumed inside Desktop. I would like the service to copy all files in the first user-defined directory to a temporary directory on the server, process them, produce output files, archive them in a zip file, and transfer them to the second user-defined directory. Ideally, this tool would be shared as a geoprocessing service to allow for central access and speedy processing. It sounds like there is not a straight-forward method to do this with ArcGIS for Server 10.1. Do you have any suggestions? Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated! Amy ... View more

Tom, yes it is possible to add several individual address locators to a composite address locator, regardless of the type (online geocoding service, StreetMap address locator provided with the software, or your own address locator you created with your own reference data). The TA_Address_NA geocoding services that are available when you make the GIS Server connection to http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/services is itself a composite address locator. http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=919dd045918c42458f30d2c85d566d68 -Shana Thanks for the tip, Shana. I tried using an ArcGIS geocoding service in a composite address locator and received an error when the locator was building. I was also unable to repair it. Has anyone else run into similar issues? -Amy ... View more

Regardless of locator type, it's always a good idea for naming conventions when you do a lot of geocoding. Fantastic advice! Much of the data I work with are from publicly accessible tables downloaded as text files from organizations' websites. They often requires a decent amount of cleanup. Luckily, it seems like there are some good techniques that can be used to impose conventions after-the-fact, such as the "Standardize Addresses" tool, or simply writing scripts to clean up text files. By the way, at the moment I'm 85% through a geocode of 20,000+ records with a current unmatched rate of 4%. 😉 Take care, Amy ... View more

You would need to decide on a naming convention; that is really important since point based locators are typically not very forgiving. Wow! Thanks, Joe, this has been immensely helpful. I truly appreciate the time you've taken to respond to my questions on this forum. My concern about the point you made above is that, because point based locators aren't as forgiving as other types of locators, many of the intersections in my table may not be matched. For example, if I have a point called "US Highway 1 & Orange Ave", and my table has an entry such as "hwy 1 & orange av", would a match be made, or does the table entry need to match the point name exactly? Amy ... View more