creating a template with variable data for state DOT NEPA documents

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10-10-2011 09:58 AM
MeganCogburn
New Contributor
I'm looking to create a template or base map for my group at work (approx. 10 employees). The ArcGIS skill level amongst my group members varies, which is why I have been tasked with creating guidelines and a base map so that all of our reports look consistent.

The majority of layers needed for each project are the same, however each project varies depending on which county its in. Currently our GIS files are sorted by county so that each county in the state has their own folder with streets, boundaries, and parcels. Is there a way I can make a template with access to each of these variables so that a user does not have to navigate to the county specific folders to add streets, boundaries, and parcels? The reason being is so that novice GIS users can access this template to produce a map for our reports that is consistent in design.

Does anyone have any ideas or tips? Any help or opinions would be greatly appreciated!
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JoshuaDamron
Occasional Contributor III
Greetings,
  I think I understand that you are trying to create a single .MXD template which each user can work from for their individual county/project and this will allow the cartography to be identical across the board; however each county's data is in individual files.

An idea of how I would go about this is to simply pull all of the data in to the MXD, then group the files by county in the table of contents (shift+click to select the files in the table of contents then rightclick and select "group", then rename the groups to match the specific county).  Meaning Group 1 = County A's Streets, parcels, boundaries etc; Group 2 = County' B's Streets, parcels, boundaries ets. 

I would then let each user either simply turn off or remove the county groups which do not apply to them.  This way all you are doing is setting up a single template (not 10) and they can simply turn on and off what they need to use.

As far as symbology, set up one county's cartography how you want it, then save each file's symbology as a layerfile.  Use those layerfiles for each county's data via the Layerproperties>Symboloby>Import button.

Hope this helps!
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