Latest Contributions by BrittJohnson

Anyone out there have an automated script or model for loading of control points? We're in the process of designing or Parcel Fabric model, and I'm brainstorming ways to add in new control points as we get them. Right now we have a custom add-in for our survey crew to upload new survey points from a text file to a point feature class in SDE. I was hoping to be able to build some sort of script that could automatically push new points to the parcel fabric control after they are uploaded into our existing feature class. In searching around today though, I haven't found any ways to load new data to the control other than manually with the wizard in ArcCatalog; or just digitizing them in during a parcel editing session. Also I've tested out simply trying to use the Append tool; but it looks like standard GP tools won't work on that feature class. Seems that the only editing that can be done to it is during a parcel edit session. Also would be nice to be able to map fields somehow when uploading points; instead of having to modify input field names to match those in the Control feature class. We could certainly just use the loading wizard in Catalog every time; but were hoping someone might have some ideas for automating the process. Britt GIS Technician City of Auburn, AL ... View more

We have a point address locator (built off of an ESRI template we got from a white paper some time ago) for handling point addresses with unit numbers. It works quite well for our needs, one thing in particular that we like is how it matches addresses whether or not they have a City/State as part of the address. This is an important feature; as our address reference data (both points and block ranges) does not include any City/State information to be mapped as a zone for the locator templates. For Example, if we input "144 Tichenor Av" (a valid address in the reference data); it will return that address with a score of 100. Now if we input "144 Tichenor Av, Auburn, AL"; the locator returns "144 Tichenor Av" with a score of 90. It appears to treat the City/St information as a spelling hit on the score, but will still return the valid address. The issue has arisen is that our line locator is built off the default USAddress Dual-Range template included with ArcGIS. With the line locator built from this template, any address that is input with a City/State at the end of the string will return no matches; even if the street number and street parts of the string are valid for a good address in the reference data. In conversations with Tech Support they indicated that this is expected behavior from the USAddress templates due to the fact that our reference data has no zone information. Also, in their opinion our point locator is working "incorrectly" when it returns matches that do have the City/State as part of the input address string. While that might be the case from a design standpoint; for our needs this is exactly how we need our locators to function. Has anyone had any luck in customizing the default USAddress templates to "disregard" City/State parts of an address string and return matches; instead of this default functionality of not returning any matches in this case? I have tried commenting out various parts of the zone information in the XML template; but this usually results in a locator that will not match any addresses. Admittedly, I am very new to customizing locators at the XML schema level though. Britt GIS Technician City of Auburn, AL ... View more

We have an attribute domain that will need to be updated on a regular basis as new values are added to a master table of street names, and we are trying to find a way to script out the updating of it. Now the issue is this domain is assigned to fields in several feature classes that will almost always have schema locks on them from users leaving ArcMap documents open and some map services. We have tried several versions of a workflow in our Python script; but it always ends up reporting the same error at some point: ERROR 000464: Cannot get exclusive schema lock.  Either being edited or in use by another application. Our first attempt was to simply use the Table to Domain tool to overwrite the existing domain values; but that crashes due to the error. Secondly, we tried to first remove the domain from the pertinent feature class fields, then use Table to Domain to replace the domain values; but the script throws the error when trying to reassign the domain to the needed fields. Our other possibility was to generate a list of all the current domain values, delete those values from the domain, and then append in the new values with Table to Domain (thinking that maybe appending instead of overwriting on the domain would solve it); but the error appears here when trying to delete the existing values from the domain. When our nightly update scripts run there will almost always be some schema locks on that domain; so we need to find a way to update the domain with those present if possible. Wondering if anyone has run into a similar issue and found a workflow that gets around those pesky schema locks? Britt GIS Technician City of Auburn, AL ... View more

I'm needing to remove the domains from a couple of fields in a table stored in_memory in a script. In reading the documentation, it would appear that the in_memory dataset does not support domains, and that they should disappear when using the Table to Table tool to convert the table from the original data source to the in_memory table. However, on output from the in_memory table the domains remain; also when using the Remove Domain from Field tool on the in_memory table and then exporting the table to a scratch database it does not remove the domains either. Any ideas on how to dispose of these domains from the in_memory dataset? ... View more