Do You Still Use ArcView 3.X?
Brian Timoney brings up a great question in the comments to my last post.
James: I’d love a show of hands of folks that never made the switch to 8.x or 9.x because of common everyday tasks that a 3.x workflow still carries out quiet satisfactorily….
I use ArcView 3.2a almost every day myself, though I’ll be honest I can’t recall the last time I wrote an Avenue script. I guess I have them all ready to go, already written. Just copy and paste into a new APR and away I go.
I talked about trying to get some of our clients to move to ArcGIS over a year ago.
We use ArcView 3.x and we have not paid maintenance since the late 90’s. No compelling reason to. I’ve been to the UC the last couple years on someone elses dime and I still don’t see much that I can’t do with good old ArcView.
Plus it is so damn slow.
Man. 3.2a. You are living in the dark ages. I’m living it up with 3.3. Use it almost every day because it still does things that 9.x doesn’t do - at lease easily. Think some of that will change with 9.2, but I’ll wait and see.
It’s great for ye old projection diagnosis and we have some DRG clipper extension that is hands down the easiest way to decollar a topo.
Still use ArcView 3.2. We have many Extensions that have been written in Avenue and have never made it to VBA.
It faster in processing in some respects and has the ’subract’ command.
Joining Tables is much faster too.
mapperz
Gave it up about 2 years ago when I started at a new job building a GIS from scratch for a local city. Prior to that I used it every day from it’s initial 1.x release (in addition to the most current Arc/Info releases).
That being said, I can turn 180 degrees in my chair and grab the disk off my shelf if I should have a need for it again. I still think that it’s a solid tool where you can get some real work done so long as you have your favorite extensions and scripts handy.
Wow. I NEVER use ArcView 3.x. Seems my coworkers like it but I think it’s one of those legacy issues as I never was trained on it. I started using Arc 9 from the get-go . Avenue? What’s that? People really need to move on - party like it’s 2006 not 1999! (mmmm, VBA scripting….)
There are reasons to use ArcGIS over ArcView 3.x I wouldn’t put VBA scripting in my top 50.
I should have mentioned that I do use AML and ArcInfo desktop command line *every* day ( I did give up SML
)
I know that’s very 1993 of me but sometimes you need to get things done!
Interesting. As someone who came out of a local GIS training program, the schools aren’t even covering Avenue scripting these days. Python was barely covered and even then, we didn’t touch on how a traditional IT dept uses it.
The school was beholden to ESRI so they are pushing out grads with little knowledge of traditional tools/languages in the GIS field.
Anyone have thoughts on how well new grads are doing these days? Avenue is one of those legacy skills that I would imagine is harder to find these days….
(keep up the good work James, I enjoy reading the postings!)
Until they create ArcInfo Librarian support for ArcGIS, its ArcView3.2 every day.
“Until they create ArcInfo Librarian support for ArcGIS, its ArcView3.2 every day.“
You are my hero!
In our local gov’t environment, we still have a highly customized 3.1 interface on all our user’s desktops (~150), but it’s become a real pain in the ass to maintain as our users become increasingly GIS-proficent and ask for more and more functionality. And since we’re fully into SDE and tied into many of the enterprise systems in the muni, supporting 3.1 requires many processes that we’d love to do without.
We’ve also created numerous custom 9.x apps (in ArcView) that have been very successful. Alas, we’re now in the process of moving ahead with ArcGIS Server and killing 3.1 once and for all.
You have GOT to be kidding–You all still use that sucky old 3.x arcview???? Now, I used to be in love with 3.x (and 2.x before it) but I can remember the exact moment when I realized how much better ArcMap is. I could go on & on about how much better ArcMap is….
I should mention that after that “watershed moment” when I realized how much better ArcMap is, I never looked back, despite giving up tons of cool Avenue scripts. Man, there are just so many advantages to ArcMap/ArcGIS. I absolutely HATE when I have to open an old .apr 3.x is so old, backwards, and silly once you “see the light”… Sorry, but I just today had to open an old .apr to pull up an archived project, and I absolutely hated every moment of it…
I use 3.2a once in a while. I have a total of three avenue scripts that I have never migrated to vba or python.
I have plans to migrate them all into one python script, I just haven’t found the time to do it. One day ….
We are also still using 3.2a here at the uni. Privately I prefer GRASS, but at the uni I use both (with strong preference towards GRASS, of course).
I am disappointed that ESRI failed to keep up a MAC version of the GIS software. I am not giving up my G4 for this, much as I like it.
Cynthia, the cool kids are running ArcGIS on OS X using Parallels Desktop.
our primary base data holdings are still in ArcLibrarian, and will remain so for some time yet. So yes, of our ~30 users 20 or so are ArcView 3.x only and the rest some combinatin of AV3 and 9. No one is 9 only.
Why ArcLibrarian?
* coverages man! The regions sub-coverages datamodel is so powerful. One geometry, many views derived from the attributes. The topology rules in 9.x try to graft parts of this back onto the geodatabase model but it just doesn’t work well (read: more work for the gis administrator and the geometry is still duplicated. For what it’s worth, the GRASS vector model goes even farther than coverages down the “one geometry and many views” road.)
* coverages don’t move (much) when you edit them. Shapes do if you edit in ArcMap (c.f. http://yukongis.ca/bin/view/Main/DataShiftOnEdit ). Why this has never become a big screaming issue for the general ArcMap-using populace I don’t understand.
* speed. AV3+Libraries is miles faster than ArcMap9+personal-geodatabase
* data replication. We have regional offices with a thin network pipeline betwixt us and them. A central SDE server is just unworkable, but a scheduled task of “xxcopy /clone \\mainserver\arclibrary \\region1\arclibrary” is easy and painless to understand and setup — and doesn’t involve any extra licensing or maintenance fees.
That said, for cartography work it’s ArcMap all the way baby (with forays into Illustrator for some of the more “postery” or wordy ones).
I still use ArcView 3.2 every day.
9.2 might change things. High precision file geodatabases are great! No more XYlimits, much faster than shapefiles, and no 2GB limit, no fuzzy creep. Python and ArcToolbox can do most jobs that Arc:aml tools do, and perhaps a lot of avenue as long as you don’t want to interact with a map.
Still no good joining and linking of tables with dynamic selection updating between tables….
Dear freind,
I want to learn how to programme with avenue in arcview 3.2a. I need documents who can help me.
Thanks
I graduated Ohio University in 2004. In my first two years of school, they were teaching us GIS in 3X. When I left, we were learning 8X. My school was more interested in teaching the fundamentals of Geography using GIS as a tool. I personally like 9.1 and can’t wait for 9.2. It’s about time other players in the GIS business, like Google Earth, are forcing ESRI to become more compatible and easier to use. It is my belief that the individual or company should stick with what is best for them. Some clients need Arc 9 to run there databases and some need Arc 3 to make simple maps. As for programming, ha, that wasn’t even mentioned in the curiculum. To me, that’s what companies like Data East (XTools) is for.
these might help:
Sample scripts & utils:
http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=downloads.samplesUtilities.listSamples&PID=25
Programming efficiency:
http://www.sandia.gov/GIS/tech/avcsus.htm
Extending Avenue with Python:
http://avpython.sourceforge.net/tutorial/
My two cents…
Each platform(ArcGISx vs AV3x) has it’s strengths, weakness, and place. As many has already argued. Not gonna to reharsh that.
Personaly, I use whatever gets the job done. For example, one of my responsibilites, I take care of a ArcView3x dataviewer wihch is ran off a CD. Granted it’s not a full blown AV3x, the user has access to only view, tables and layouts with each having limited functions.
I feed the “monster”, using ArcGIS to create the information for the CDs. Much faster to use ArcGIS than AV3x.
In this case, ArcGIS does all the grunt work and AV3x gets all the glory.
KoS
I am struggling with the full adoption and use of 9.X as the GIS Manager in our small organization. I use 3.2a daily and 9.X when I want good output maps (excellent AI transfer), but the new GIS ‘kids’ were raised on 8.X. I banned the personal geodatabase due to its clunkiness. They would be amazed how fast a join would happen in 3.2 vs 9.1 (coverage or shapefile). However, I have high hopes for the ‘file geodabase’ in 9.2! It’s the little things, like having to open ArcCatalog just to create an entity which bums me out. Why not put ‘create new feature’ in the edit toolbar? The sheer number of scripts out there in 3.2 boggle the mind. 8.X and 9.X scripts have a long way to catch up. Still, I am looking forward to the soon-shipping 9.2. Our maintenance fees for floating and single-use licenses are depleting the cookie jar with Spatial Analyst included, and we have 3D Analyst with 3.2, not 9.X - so 3.2 will continue for certain projects for awhile.
James,
ArcGIS DOES have “library support”. It’s called ArcSDE for coverages and it comes with an ArcInfo licence. It works well for a coverage. Might be a bit slow for a real library.
Slow? Speed and performance is every thing. Compared to ArcView3.2 it does not even rate. Plus I just found another reason to still love AV3.2; the CAD engine displays any DWG file text in the colors intended. In ArcGIS 9x I always get black.
I use 8.3, 9.2 and 3.2. The latter with all the extensions I was ever able to get my hands on. Many of them they don’t have for VB. Well, I needed a new machine and have lost the old 3.2 disk. PC Relocator didn’t feel like moving it from my other machine. I do have the 3.1 version, but my 3.2 upgrade patch doesn’t like it. So, I went to ESRI to buy another copy. They’re not selling them anymore, but were kind enough to give me an autho code should I be able to get my hands on one. I did a search but found no 3.2. Would anyone know where I could buy a legit copy of 3.2?
ArcView 3.x with a suite of custom extensions has for years enabled our large and diverse community of distributed analysts with no GIS background to interact with and fuse data from myriad spatial and non-spatial databases (considerable time is spent working with tabular data sets lacking spatial context). It remains so highly effective that ArcMap just isn’t a particularly compelling alternative for interactive analysis (especially for those on UNIX!).
The real value of ArcGIS lies in the GeoProcessing framework, which fosters analytic discipline and collaboration through creation and distribution of models. It is a different and desirable approach to analysis that we intend to establish as central to our emerging architecture. Our intent is to enable composition and publication of models as services that can be leveraged from a range of clients, spatial and non-spatial, thick and thin, as appropriate.
Few of the Python scripts behind the GP tools in our custom toolbox leverage ArcObjects, and few of the ESRI GP tools included in our analytic models would be difficult to replicate, so it only makes sense to investigate alternatives to ArcGIS Server and ArcToolbox, which in ArcGIS 9.x is unfortunately embedded within ArcMap (how’s that for ArcConfusion?). It’s quite possible that ArcView 3.x will be replaced with a non-ESRI solution…
So, have you ArcGIS 9.2 users figured out how to clip DRGs if you don’t have ArcView 3.2 still? And, if you don’t have ArcINFO?
Thanks
Lindsay
Lindsay, I’m not that familiar with DRG’s, but, once you add it to ArcMap, can you clip it by zooming to the extent that you want, right-clicking the DRG in the layer list, and setting the extent in the Export dialog to “DataFrame”? I do that frequently when exporting MrSid files to other formats. However, I do have an ArcInfo license, but I think the export is part of the ArcView capabilities.
James, would you like to try this extension?
http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=15298
If you still use ArcView GIS
Hi Folks, I am a student of GIS and we use arc view, something I need to know for a looming exam is disadvantages to the network analyst extension, any suggestions?
eil, the Network Analyst is still one of the best extension to Arcview ever
I recently became employed at a firm (and my predecessor departed before my arrival) that has high level tool extensions for AV 3x all in Avenue. Unfortunately it is one of those “the creator got hit by a car” scenarios, and I never learned Avenue, only used ArcGIS 8x and up. All the Avenue scripts involve major geoprocessing such as overlays, buffering, joins to MSAccess tables and editing of Access tables with products output as printed maps and Word Documents all spit out of the networked printers. There are at least 30 people reliant on these. No documentation exists for these scripts? I guess this is the problem with proprietary scripting languages. Now we are faced with the decision of how to proceed. Exciting as it is to think “out of the box,” with options such as OpenSource solutions in addition to ESRI, it sure is an enormous headache. Everything exists as a coverage. We use 99% vector data. The region model is incredibly useful, but all major editing takes place in AE command line…arghhh! The conversion process to a RDMS will be daunting to say the least, especially uncoupling the many polygon regions that exist under one coverage polygon. But in the end to be rid of the bulk of the coverage model will be a relief!
The result will be all users as thin web clients and tools programmed in .Net…..in time of course.
I still use ArcView3.3 because it is easier and faster than ArcGIS9.2 for editing polygons, and because I like the “TAZ” georeferencing tool better than the ArcGIS9.2 tool.
I do use 9.2 for raster calculations, or if I need to write a little VBA code for field calculations in an attribute table.
Still use 3.x in the very common scenarios when 9x can’t process a table over 50,000 records. I love watching the “alarm clock” and status bar churn through dense datasets that 9.x can’t even fathom. 3D, spatial, image analyst, grid tools especially… it’s a great tool to use, and entirely portable! All those avl’s, avx’s etc that i catalogued over the years will be with me wherever I go in my career. You just don’t know when you’ll need it.
@ Marracci “Still use 3.x in the very common scenarios when 9x can’t process a table over 50,000 records.”
Actually you can, but have to reset the number of records from the default in the AdvancedArcMapSettings.exe found in the Utilities folder.
hello… well I still use AV3.2 because that’s what’s available to me but recently we switch to newer computers and of course it’s a nightmare… I sometimes get the error message:
“ESRI ArcView3.2 Error in Theme.ShowNodesUpdate at 229
A(n) IATheme object does not recognize request GetFTab”
and usually un-installing and re-installing usually makes it disappear… but now it won’t go away…
Does anyway has a “patch” for this issue? If so how can I obtain it… and if not please send me your suggestions… thanks so much!
Jo-
Doesn’t look like the error you get is related to a bad installation of ArcView 3 but an error in the code/extension combinations you are using.
Looks like you are using Image Analysis Extension and loading an Image into your view. Another extension (One that allows you to draw nodes at the end of arcs, presumably) loaded that has a script named Theme.ShowNodesUpdate that does not handle that Image properly. The solution would be either not load the conflicting extensions at the same time or modifiy the node-drawing extension.
I have been using (and programming) ArcView 3.2 for a few years (with some hiatuses). What drives me mad it is the “segmentation violation” errors that occurs in various phases running my Avenue programs. That means ArcView flies away on a point of my program, which was worked earlier, then again on another running it flies away again on an other point. It is impossible to debug.
Other problem is what I am facing now to emulate some kind of topology of a network, which means finding exact route crossings on a map programatically and writing into the segments beginning and ending nodes the value of the really measured mileages of the crossings.
I can handle this problem on a level, but my program (using a copy of network nodes table) drops me out from ArcView in every other sessions with that segmentation violation error on various points.