Ubikcan wonders why ArcReader requires such a powerfull PC to work. Simple, it is pretty much full blown ArcGIS minus all the features. I’d expect ArcExplorer to be much easier on the systems than ArcReader. Still, the point of a reader program is that you don’t need a full blown GIS system. If ArcExplorer supports PMF files, I’d say Reader is pretty much dead anyway.
Category: Thoughts
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ArcGIS Server Utility Classes GotDotNet Workspace Project
Link – ArcGIS Server Utility Classes: Workspace Home
One thing I’ve been meaning to do is set up a GotDotNet workspace for ArcGIS Server utility classes. The workspace is up, and I threw up a project containing SOC (Server Object Container) COM utility classes. This is not entirely generic, and it’s currently namespaced as “Sanborn.Utilities.ArcGIS.Server.SOC” (Any ideas on namespaces?? OpenESRI.Blah.Blah?) but it’s a start. It’s also VB.NET if that matters. Without further ado…
Good for someone to step up and actually start up one of these development projects. We’ve been talking about it for months and Dave Bouwman has created one and populated it with some ArcGIS utility classes. I’ll be back in the office on Thursday so you can be sure that I’ll be taking a look at this. Our little shop has been more of an ArcIMS developer than ArcGIS Server, but we’ve been beginning to start programming with ArcGIS Server. As soon as we finish up this little Map Objects project, I really want to get into ArcGIS Server.
ESRI really should be providing this service to us GIS programmers, but it sounds like Brian is on it so hopefully this ArcGIS Server effort can drive the move to a shared development environment to replace ArcScripts. The best way to move this forward is to participate and show ESRI how valuable this can be.
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Podcasts and Web 2.0
I’m still not really sure what will become of Podcasts in the next year but I can tell you that they are much easier to listen to on an airplane than trying to fight with Newsgator and RSS feeds on my laptop. I ended up listening to the Very Spatial, NPR and Engadget podcasts. Not a bad use of my time as there aren’t any movies or even food served on most flights these days. Plus if I don’t get my laptop out I won’t be working in my Outlook either so that is an added bonus.
Of course you can’t really listen to a Podcast these days without someone mentioning Web 2.0. I’ve been able to put a filter on my RSS feeds to automatically toss any feed post that has the words “Web 2.0” in the text to the trash (which ironically means this one wouldn’t show up). I’m so sick of this term and how people are using it. It is just a marketing term to describe the latest internet bubble and try and make as much money off of it before it all crashes again. I just miss those old Web 1.0 days where everyone put the letter “e” or “i” in front of their product. Oh well, better check back with the office and make sure they are completing all our Web 2.0 applications.
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The ArcGlobe Text Toolbar — Label in ArcGlobe
Link – Labeling in ArcGlobe: The ArcGlobe Text Toolbar
Ever wanted to label a layer in ArcGlobe? The recently updated “ArcGlobe Text Toolbar” allows an ArcGlobe user to label any FeatureLayer with true 3D text. Labels are transparently persisted to an external GLM file (eg myGlobeDocument.glm). The toolbar also extends the ArcGlobe animation framework. Text can be animated over time and space. Other properties such as color and azimuth can also be animated.
I think ArcGlobe has been ignored over the years for many reasons (some valid, others aren’t), but now with Google Earth taking off, many GIS professionals are taking a second look at ArcGlobe especially since ArcReader 9.2 9.1 will support Globe documents removing the requirement for ArcView or greater. I wish I had a better laptop than I did because I can’t really run ArcGlobe well with this really poor video card.
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Site Statistics For September
September Statistics
- Total Pages: 150,957 (average 5,031)
- Total Visits: 64,802 (average 2,160)
Top 10 Search Strings
- earthgoogle
- spatially adjusted
- arc2earth
- tracking rita
- shapefile to kml
- geochat
- arcims
- arcpad 7
- esri
- arcexplorer 9.2
Thanks for everyone who has stopped by, traffic has increased almost 5 times over August.
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Heading out for a couple days
I’m heading out tonight to State College, PA to work on a project that combines a little GIS with loading docks (think Network Analyst). Anyway I’ll be posting pretty light over the next few days so make sure you check some other great blogs for GIS news. I’ve posted a list below of the ones that have been posting great stuff in the last couple weeks.
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Portland Maps search now supports Google Earth
I had posted about the Portland Maps Advanced Search last week and how it integrated Google Maps into the user interface to allow users to see where their results were located before going to more detailed mapping of each site. Richard Davies just posted to let us know that he’s gotten the export to Google Earth working and now your results can be view in the Google Earth application. Go ahead and search using the Portland Maps Advanced Search tool. When the results are return, you’ll see a little Google Earth KML icon in the lower left portion of the page.
Just click on that to download the KML file into your Google Earth.
This is really slick, compared to most municipal web mapping sites, Portland really has their ducks in a row with the latest technology. Great job guys!
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Mapz Librarian Blog
Link – mapz librarian
I used to post about every GIS or map blog that I found, but there are so many these days that I’ve kind of gotten off the habit of doing so. Well this isn’t a new blog, mapz librarian has been around for awhile, but it is now on Blogger. I’ve been subscribed for some time but I’ve never posted about it which is a shame because he’s a GIS Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington and has a very different take on GIS than most of us GIS bloggers. Joshua’s been a good blogger before, but now that he’s off of Bloglines and on to Blogger, I’m sure everyone will be reading more of him.
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Arc2Earth Offers ArcToolbox Integration
Link – Arc2Earth Update – ArcToolbox Integration
One feature that I wanted to point out specifically is the integration of A2E into the ArcGIS Geoprocessing subsystem. Essentially, this will allow the A2E exporter to be called directly from scripts (Python, VBScript etc.), Models, the CommandLine or directly from ArcToolbox. My favorite right now is the Model integration, there is just a myriad of geospatial analysis that be accomplished. Likewise, the time savings from the automation can be pretty significant. So now the final step can be to create a KML or KMZ file for consumption of the results directly in GE.
I love this. You can perform analysis on your datasets and then send to users who don’t have ArcGIS. Export to KML becomes as easy as exporting to a e00 (well actually easier). I’ve written so many AMLs in my life that I even today continue to use AML (and Python) for scripting many of my analysis tasks. Rather than adding the output to ArcMap and generating a PDF to show others the results, I can just send them the KML and let them view it in Google Earth. Sweet!
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More About Google Earth the Data Shift
I’ve been working with Brian Flood to determine how and why the data won’t line up in Google Earth when exported out of ArcGIS into a KML/KMZ file. Brian figured out the following:
there definitely seems to be a shift in GE’s aerials in some places (e.g. none in NJ, mild in Nevada, somewhat severe in your area). However, it looks like the WGS cords returned by GE are correct, so its overlaying your data correctly, its just its other base data is slightly shifted. I suspect this is QA/QC issue for GE
For the next build, I added a xy shift variable that can be controlled by the user, essentially making up for the GE base data errors.
Not a great story but if GE is used purely as a viewer it works. I also will mark the KML with comments so the shift can be undone at a later date (or simply re-exported)
This isn’t good/bad news really as one can manually adjust the x/y shift, but it adds a step to the export that shouldn’t be there and this is compounded by the fact that the shift isn’t constant across the globe. At least now we know what the issue is and hopefully all ArcMap to KML extensions will add the ability to adjust the x/y shift soon.