Category: Thoughts

OK, where the heck is ArcSDE CAD Client for 9.2?

Its May already and I still don’t see it on the ESRI support site. My choice right now is AutoCAD 2006 (or earlier) and ArcSDE 9.1 which isn’t much of a choice at all anymore (my company is in the process of upgrading us from AutoCAD 2007 to 2008 and I can probably hold on to the 2007 license, but 2006 is out of the question) and I’m in the process of upgrading our Oracle 10g/SDE 9.1 install to SQL Server 2006/SDE 9.2 which I don’t want to hold off too much longer on. I know at the Dev Summit the word was April 2007, but here we are in May and it still isn’t there.

Grrr!

OK, I’m first to admit I’m a loser but I like RSS feeds. I can’t be bothered with email alerts or remembering to check a webpage regularly for announcements. RSS feeds were made to help a scatterbrain like me. It looks like we might be on the edge of real RSS feeds for the ESRI Support site. Run over the the ESRI Support Blog and let them know what you think.

This has been a pet peeve of mine and its not just a problem with ESRI ArcGIS Explorer. Google has the search figured out just about perfectly. Give the user one text box to enter in their search query and return results. Microsoft’s Virtual Earth has not gotten this right yet.

I don’t understand the need to put two search dialogs up there in the top. I’m always entering in my search query wrong because I’m not paying attention to which text box I should use.

ArcGIS Explorer has a similar problem. As you’d expect, there is a “find place” task available to search. The problem is while this works great for place names, it won’t recognize coordinates. Putting in the location of the Matterhorn into this text box:

Of course there is a way to go to coordinates in AGX (from the ESRI ArcGIS Explorer help):

If you want to find a place by its coordinates don’t use Find Place; use the Go to Location (Ctrl-G) command on the Tools menu instead.

One simple text box to find a place is all that should be needed. Google has this right and others should emulate this functionality.

A reader sent this to me and its interesting. When you click on a lat/long location in Wikipedia you are sent to a page listing all the different options to view this place. Most people probably click on the Google Maps or Google Earth choices, but apparently down lower there is a “GIS-related Maps” section.

I’m not sure why AWX is tucked down in the “GIS-related Maps” section as you’d think it would be better suited up with Google/Yahoo/Virtual Earth Maps. How long to ArcGIS Explorer gets listed here?

Boy it has been a busy day, but one more huge item to post about. In support of the ArcGIS Explorer release yesterday ArcGIS Online ESRI has pushed out the 2D and 3D maps with their detailed image map service.

This week marks the completion of a high-resolution imagery layer for the United States in both 2D and 3D. The layer includes i-cubed Nationwide Prime 1m or better resolution imagery for the contiguous United States. I-cubed Nationwide Prime is a seamless, color mosaic of various commercial and government imagery sources, including Aerials Express 2-foot imagery for metropolitan areas and the best available USDA NAIP imagery and enhanced versions of USGS DOQQ imagery for other areas.

Here is the view of downtown Tempe in ArcMap. I’d throw up a Globe view but all our 3D Analyst licenses are being used right now.

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UPS dropped off a package of DVDs for our EDN subscriptions containing ArcGIS Image Server 9.2 SP1.

ESRI has released ArcGIS Explorer Build 380 is now available for download (or auto update from inside ArcGIS Explorer). Some of the new improvements are:

• New Default Map – 1m for contiguous USA with speed improvements. It looks much, much better than Build 350 and faster
• New Navigator – the old AGX navigation has been replaced with a nice streamlined navigator that is over the map rather than on a dock. Much more of what to expect with a digital globe.
• Printing – AGX has basic printing capabilities (without having to pay ESRI)_
• File Import “Wizard” – Bring in text files of address and such. No Excel support yet, but given ESRI’s track record with Excel files I’d assume its coming.
• Improved “Find Place” Task – Those outside of USA will have to vouch for its improved search capability.
• Improved WMS Support – You can now choose single or multiple layers instead of the groups from before. Much, much better!
• KML Contents – Slowly ArcGIS is beginning to get KML support. I’m sure we’ll hear about how bad it is, but for now it read in some Arc2Earth KMLs I created without incident.
• WMS layers support transparency and the swipe tool

I’m sure we’ll start seeing more appear in the next day, but Build 380 is a huge improvement that anyone who has downloaded A350 will want to give it another go.

Update – Sebastian Good takes a detailed look under the hood of AGX Build 380.

Update 2 – ESRI’s AGX “What’s New” page

The Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog has the news many of us have been waiting for:

Somewhere in the shadow of these huge announcements, new simplified licensing terms for the Windows Live Platform (WLP), including Virtual Earth, were rolled out. If you’re interested in using multiple services of the WLP, VE is covered as part of the broad license for the Platform. WLP is free for use on websites that have less than 1 million Unique Users and Commercial-use is completely supported in these terms of use! The license covers Contacts, Photos, Silverlight Streaming, Search, Virtual Earth, and Windows Live ID.

Yahtzee!

The 1 meter imagery looks good and I can see my office clear in Tempe, AZ.

AGX still fails the Matterhorn test though.

I figured I’d try Chad’s Mogadishu Refugee Migration KML in ArcGIS Explorer and see how it looks.

While it appears that KML rendering has improved, its still not able to handle transparency. Take a look at the same KML in Google Earth.

KML support in AGX still has quite a way to go.