New productivity and performance improvements at ArcGIS 9.2

  • Keyboard shortcuts for tools (hit “z” for the zoom function)
  • Better mouse roller wheel support
  • Better context menus
  • Customize Map Scale list (1” to 200’, etc)
  • Limit Zoom to full extent (stops you from zooming out to the whole world rather than your focus area)
  • Right click and identify any feature
  • Sort the identify results (or hide fields you don’t want to see)
  • Copy and paste right out of identify window
  • Hide fields in tables very easily (just double click on them)
  • Print attribute tables!
  • Right click and calculate areas or length (no more vb code).
  • Table navigation mimics Microsoft Excel (word wrapping also)
  • Help now includes video tutorials
  • Supports CAD documents symbology
  • No longer need to set domains in geodatabases or grid size
  • You can set by default “relative path” in your map documents rather than have to manually change it every time
  • All ArcToolbox tools support batch operations (right click and hit batch)
  • File Geodatabase improves performance over Personal Geodatabase (much, much faster)
  • Flicker capability (rapidly turn layers on and off to toggle back and forth between datasets)
  • Export to PDF now includes named layers (layers tab in Acrobat can now turn on and off the layers right inside the PDF)
  • Native support of Excel (add Excel spreadsheets can be added right to the layers list of ArcMap)
  • Support for archiving (see changes to geodatabase over time and even use the new animation tools and save movies out to show change over time)
  • New graph support (Much easier to make “Excel Quality” graphs from inside ArcMap)
  • OH I heard mention of using an Python script and R within your ArcGIS Model

I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard the kind of cheering and clapping that I’ve heard today in a very long time