Latest Contributions by MichaelGrossman

Implemented in ArcGIS Desktop 10 and ArcGIS Pro 1.0. In ArcMap, toolbars and map viewer windows can be placed on a second monitor. And panes like the attribute table, python window, catalog, and table of contents can be floated and docked into a window on either screen. In ArcGIS Pro, float and dock functionality extends to a view types, including Maps, Scenes, Layouts, and Database Design views.   ... View more

No significant feature updates are planned for the ArcGIS Desktop 10.x applications. ... View more

This request is unfortunately not on our product roadmap due to technical complexity and the very different design intent of Views versus Panes. Tables, Maps, and Scenes are Views, and thus cannot be docked with Panes, such as the Contents or Catalog pane. As noted in the comments on this Idea, this separation was not there in ArcMap. ArcGIS Pro is very different from ArcMap in that it is a ribbon-based application and depends greatly on context to drive the user experience and what you see on the ribbon. This context is driven by Views, like the Table or the Map. It is not driven by panes. Views are also optimized for displaying content instead of hosting control surfaces. We also intentionally separate the persistence behavior of the two types: View state and screen location is saved with your project, while Pane state and location is saved to your machine. This long list of differences is why we can't support docking Views and Panes together in ArcGIS Pro. ... View more

This should be addressed in a future release as part of an overhaul of UI colors and tab design. The new design includes changes to make the currently selected tab stand out more, while subduing the Project tab visually. Thank you for the feedback. ... View more

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources‌, If you are running 1.0.1692, you should not be seeing the version expired message. It may be possible that you have two versions installed, Pro Prelease (1472) and Pro Prerelease Update 2 (1692). You can check for them in these two default locations: "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS Pro" (our older default) and "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro" our newer default. If you don't locate duplicate installs and have verified that 1692 is showing this message, can you please contact technical support for them to do a deeper analysis of the problem? Sincerely, Michael ... View more

ArcGIS Pro Prerelease Update 2 is now available for download from My Esri. If you have ArcGIS Pro Prerelease or ArcGIS Pro Prerelease Update installed on any of your machines, we recommend updating to ArcGIS Pro Prerelease Update 2. Prerelease Update 2 has been available via Pro's Software Update mechanism since December 12, 2014, but we unfortunately chose not to make it available via My Esri. That meant that the built in timeout prevented anyone from running Pro Prerelease in order to trigger the Software Update, as each of you reported here. We apologize for this error in judgment. We have also received feedback, from Joshua Bixby and others, that over-reliance on Pro Software Update is unacceptable. We have decided that we are committed to posting all future updates of Pro to both My Esri and the Software Update server. Thank you for your guidance on the issue and please know that we always welcome your feedback. Thank you also for the prompt notifications you posted to GeoNet this morning about the software timeout issue. We will continue monitoring this thread. Please post if you have any further issues downloading ArcGIS Pro. Sincerely, Michael and the ArcGIS Pro team ... View more

Hi. The Map Automation forum is the best place for questions specific to arcpy.mapping [http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/176-Map-Automation].  Or you can post to the Python forum if it is a cross cutting question involving all of arcpy.  But let me take a crack at what you've posted so far... For the ListLayers problem, is the MXD slow to open in ArcMap, or only slow when accessed using arcpy.mapping outside of "CURRENT"?  If there are SDE based layers, we could have a real problem there.  Please reply with more info or log a bug with repro data attached. For the printing issue, is it slow to print in ArcMap, or only when printing with arcpy.mapping?  If arcpy.mapping printing is slower than ArcMap printing, you may be using an excessively high value for the "image_quality" parameter by accident. --Michael ... View more

Kelly, Often TIFF files fail to open in certain veiwers when specific compression types are used.  To test all of the common compression types, try again with these three calls: [INDENT] arcpy.mapping.ExportToTIFF(kmxd, kpath+"\\test1_CmprsNone.tif", resolution=300, tiff_compression="NONE") arcpy.mapping.ExportToTIFF(kmxd, kpath+"\\test1_CmprsLZW.tif", resolution=300, tiff_compression="LZW") arcpy.mapping.ExportToTIFF(kmxd, kpath+"\\test1_CmprsDeflate.tif", resolution=300, tiff_compression="DEFLATE") [/INDENT] Sincerely, Michael G. ... View more

A dynamic text on the layout can give the coordinates for the data frame corners, edges, and center, but not for arbitrary locations inside of the data frame itself.  Check out the in the Coordinate system dynamic text section in the "Working with dynamic text" help topic.  Let us know how this works out for your scenario. Michael Grossman ESRI ... View more

Dom, Yes, the mapping module is deployed with server, and it is possible to produce PDF export files and perform other arcpy.mapping functions inside of a GP service.  We'd love to hear your feedback if you can try this out for us. Michael Grossman ESRI ... View more

Andrew, Thanks for the extensive feedback and good analysis.  Here are my comments and recommended solutions: [INDENT] 1. The Map Book TOC panel. I find this MUCH easier to navigate than a small toolbar with arrows. Most often I have ~175 pages in a map book. Scrolling up and down in a list is much easier than clicking left/right or typing in (guessing) at a number. Yes, I have heard this from other beta users as well.  We will investigate improvements in a future release.  It may not be a built in part of the Table Of Contents.  One idea might be a dockable window with columns, like a table view, to help clearly display the page name, number, and maybe other info. Also, in the panel you can manipulate each individual page. In many instances I don't want to print/export every page. I just click off the ones I don't want. you can also print/export one single page. The 9.4 implementation relies on feature selection to accomplish this. To print or export a subset of pages, you have a wide palette of selection tools available for building the exact set of pages you want to output.  At time of print of export, just set the Pages mode to "Selected" and go. read more about it here: Exporting Data Driven Pages 2. Labeling Neighbor tiles is much easier. No GeoProcessing tools are needed to add fields to your index layer for dynamic labeling. It Just works. In some area of the implementation we compromised "automaticness" in order to improve reliability and performance.  Neighbor page text was one of those things. 3. Select Tile When Drawing. SUPER handy when you want to highlight just the boundary of that page. This was a very important requirement and something we still support.  You achieve the effect by adding a copy of the index feature layer to the top of the TOC.  Set it to render with an outline in the highlight color you want and set the fill color to None.  You then turn on the Page Definition query to make it render only for the current page.  Do this via the layer's Definition Query tab.  Here's the doc to learn more: Using Page Definition Queries 4. Supressing tiles that don't contain data from specific layers. Many times I'll do a definition query on a layer to show only specific features (i.e. Show me only FEMA flood zones AE). Then create map series pages for only those tiles. Easy as Pie in DSMapbook. Can't do w/ data driven pages. The first way to filter is to do it at tile generation time.  Use the Grid Index Features GP tool to generate your index tiles and use the Intersecting features option. Another way to filter is via selection.  If you want to do a temporary filter to selectively print or export, use the select by location command and print in Selected mode.  This workflow can be very powerful, because the selection framework allows you to build up selections with lots of criteria, so you could print only pages that fit a query like "FEMA flood zones AE, only if they contain parcels with Residential Zoning" etc. A third way to filter is via a regular definition query on the index layer.  If you only want pages for "FEMA flood zones AE", use the flood zones as your index layer and set the definition query for "flood zones AE" and refresh data driven pages. 5. Export each individual page to it's own PDF. This is really handy when you want to link to a pdf on a website. Also, a PDF of 175 tiles at 15MB each can make one heck of a large PDF File. There's a really simple arcpy.mapping python script that does exactly this.  Copy it from the help, paste into notepad, save as a ".py" and run it from the Python Window.  Incidentally, this is also a really great intro to the world of arcpy.mapping scripts, which can be used to create complete map books exported to any format you want. [/INDENT] Please keep the grat feedback coming. Sincerely, Michael G. ... View more

Our goal in 9.4 was two-fold: [INDENT]1) deliver a set of tools for building complete map books 2) provide an automated way to update layouts, data frames, and map documents[/INDENT] Many people express a need for mulitple layouts because they want to achieve one of those two things.  There are also other reasons people want multiple layouts.  The 9.4 beta period will be very important for us, as we need to understand which problems 9.4 has actually solved, and which workflows still need solutions. I think our future plans regarding multiple layouts will should be made with unfulfilled user requirements in mind.  For now, our solution is what you see in 9.4, focused on satisifying the above two requirements.  In the future, we can consider full multiple layouts but should do so with a set real world goals.  It would be great for us if you could provide additional details about multiple layout workflows.  I think that some needs could be covered with the new 9.4 python scripting experience.  Other requirements should go on ESRI's list for a future release. Thanks, Michael ... View more

Adam, The 9.4 data driven pages implementation is not what I would describe as multiple layouts.  You cannot, for example, add a second page, paste in a unique set of layout elements, and create a "page 2" that is unique from "page 1".  The implementation is really a group of functions that automate data frame map extents, and change certain text elements on the fly.  Map printing and exporting have also been enhanced to handle true multipage print spooling and multipage PDF export. You can read more about the implementation and concepts in the help topic called "What are Data Driven Pages?" Part of that help topic are the following statements about building full map books with ArcGIS 9.4 [INDENT] Many projects require multiple page sizes, multiple index layers, or non-map information on some pages. For example, a state atlas may contain a title page, an overview map page, and a page for each county in the state. Additionally, some counties that are home to large cities also contain inset maps. The atlas can be built using separate MXDs for overview map page, pages containing the inset maps and the remaining maps. Map scripting with Python can be used to be used to aggregate these pages into a single, multi-page PDF document. [/INDENT] We plan on uploading some sample map book creation Python scripts to the Geoprocessing Gallery sometime soon. Sincerely, Michael Grossman ... View more