Spatially Adjusted

Tag: esri

  • Brian Goldin Has Some Ideas to Get Started on ArcWeb

    Link – Public ArcWeb Services is HUGE

    This is HUGE opportunity for developers and something that probably hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Now you’ll be able to add some great services to your app and guess what you won’t have to worry about us slapping ads in there and later if you want to leverage some of more advanced capabilities you’re good to go. To make this a slam dunk it’ll have to be super easy to sign-up just like it is already for the eval. Now let’s start building some mashups with ArcWeb just like we’ve got with google.

    As I said earlier today, I was quite surprised that no one clapped over the ArcWeb Services announcement. Well I for one will start trying to get some cool mashups with ArcWeb services.

    I’m not sure if anyone at ESRI has thought about this, but releasing this for free is sure to help improve ArcWeb Services. How about adding an area at EDN for people to upload their code much like SourceForge.net? This would allow people to take collaborate on coding some really neat projects. The ArcScripts site needs to be updated. It was great for Avenue scripts, but not for posting code from today’s applications. Also, how about clearing out those “evaluation” products such at XTools Pro, everything on that site should be free and open and shouldn’t require people to pay for part of the product. I don’t think that was why ArcScripts what created in the first place. There should be a place on ESRI’s site to download such products, but it should be separate from the free and open scripts and code.

  • ArcGIS Road Ahead — What’s Coming in ArcGIS 9.2 Desktop

    ArcGIS 9.2 is due to arrive “mid-2006”. As was said yesterday is a usability release focused upon changes that users have wanted (many since ArcGIS 8 was first released) as well as some bug fixes. It looks like this 9.2 release will be very popular with ESRI users and the improved documentation is very welcome. Also they announced that we should expect a service pack release for 9.1 by the end of the year.

    ArcReader has many new enhancements including redline markups, routing, support for ArcWeb Services, and new navigation tools. The redline functions are very welcome as I can see them simplifying our workflows as we can import these markups back into our ArcGIS Desktop views and directly add the features. A huge change over paper maps or Adobe Acrobat markups.

    Highlights in Desktop 9.2 is the new cartographic editing and finishing tools. The usability improvements extend to Maplex which I welcome. The new cartographic representation in 9.2 will allow you to perform “Illustrator” enhancement right in ArcMap. I’m glad to see some of the old Workstation generalization features make it into ArcGIS desktop. I’m sure there will still be many reasons to continue to export Adobe Illustrator, but I suspect these will be the exception rather than the rule. Again we come back to ESRI improving our workflow enabling users to focus more on the map making rather than fighting export tools. One nice feature is that you can modify features using tools similar to Adobe Illustrator (lasso, vertex edit, eraser) so you’ll feel right at home. These new cartographic tools are very powerful and everyone will want to take some online Virtual Campus classes when they are offered to make sure they are taking advantage of these tools. Keep in mind that you’ll need ArcInfo to define and edit, ArcEditor can edit the representation and ArcView can only view them. Basically you’ll net a copy of ArcInfo to create and at least a ArcEditor to edit these cartographical representations (we’ll see how well this goes over). I was happy to see that ArcView can at least open and render them, but I think they need to edit them also.

    ArcMap usability improvements are aimed at making us more productive. The map and layout navigation can be done with mouse and keyboard (hot keys and mouse scroll). Leaderlines are now part of Maplex (about time!). Scale settings are easier to set (so if 1”=200’ is very important you can add that to the drop down). Print tables, direct read MS Excel files, Graphs are now improved and the ones that were displayed looks just about as good as Excel can produce. Metatdata is now viewable inside ArcMap so you won’t have to switch back to Catalog for this info. I do like that you can calculate area from right inside the table view (no longer do you need to paste VBA code to do this).

    The new CAD usability improvements will make integrating CAD into our GIS maps much easier. You can create world files for CAD files so that you can georeference CAD files (yea the georeference toolbar supports CAD). Feature rendering of CAD files is exactly how it was drawn in AutoCAD or Microstation (including block annotation). Also when you add the CAD feature dataset, it loads all the polys/lines/annotation right into a group making the table of contents much easier to navigate. After seeing the demo I can say you’ll be pleased with how ArcGIS works with CAD.

    I was just complaining last week that looping model builder was a pain, but with 9.2 you can now create loops. You can also batch process geoprocessor tools. One nice feature added was the ability to add an output right out of the model builder to your ArcGIS view so when the model finishes you’ll have the new data layer rendered as you want so you won’t have to add the layer to your map and then modify the symbology. The batch processing builder gives you power that with 9.0 and 9.1 was only available to Python scripters. If you have worked with 3D Analyst you’ll know there is an animation tool that is now available to all ArcMap users. Now you can show time in your maps (such as flooding, fires, etc).

    3D Analyst now allows you to drape text (no longer are you limited to “billboard text”), draft mode, performance and new import capabilities. There are new geoprocessing tools and support for terrains. Many of the new navigation tools look like they were influenced by tools such as Google Earth and if anyone has ever tried to navigate in ArcGlobe knows how hard it is to move around. When you add data to ArcGlobe a wizard now appears helping you modify the settings (again simplifying your workflow).

    As I said above, I think this release will be very well received. Even though 9.2 features have been frozen, you should continue to give feedback to ESRI on what you like and don’t like about ArcGIS because it does appear they are listening.

  • Andrea Rosso Talks About ArcWeb at the ESRI UC

    Link – ArcWeb at the UC Plenary

    ArcWeb Public Services announced – This is a collection of datasources for ArcWeb Services that can now be used for free, for non-commercial purposes. The availability of this is imminent and will allow users to use ArcWeb Services APIs without any credit limits. These are the production and stable ArcWeb v2 APIs but just a subset of the datasources that are usually available for use. Hopefully some interesting applications will get built off of these. You can start playing around with the eval right now to get started and switch over when the public services are available.

    Great news for everyone who has been looking at Google Maps and their API. What is great about ArcWeb is when you are ready to start making money off of your mapping solution, you can easily change the license. With Google Maps you’d be at a dead end (at least for now).

    ArcWeb Map Viewer shown – This is a sneak peak at what’s coming in our ArcWeb 2005 product. It’s a very fast vector based Flash viewer. Our services will generate Flash files which are then rendered by the Macromedia flash viewer. This is not available yet but you can come by the island this week and take a look at it. It actually has a lot more functionality than what was shown so make sure you take a look at it. It’s really fast and for now nothing is cached anywhere… each pan, zoom, etc. is a new .swf file.

    This was the most “Google-like” GUI I’ve seen from ESRI yet. Very simple and nothing to get in the way of the user working with the data. Hopefully ESRI will get a demo of this up on the web so people can see what is in store for them with ArcWeb 2005 and start programming today with the current ArcWeb Services.

    You’ll want to check out the rest of Andrea’s post to see when the ArcWeb sessions are going to be this week or at least stop by the ArcWeb Island on the main floor.

  • 13,264 GIS Professionals at 2005 ESRI UC

    The ESRI UC Blog is reporting that as of this afternoon 13,264 people were registered for the user conference. Thinking back to my first one back in Palm Springs I don’t think I could have imagined this many people. With Google Maps, Google Earth and other consumer GIS tools one can only think the conference will be getting even bigger next year (not to mention we’ll all have those great new ArcGIS 9.2 products in our hands).

  • Public ArcWeb Services are now Available

    Link – ArcWeb services sign-up is now available

    Brian announced that you can now sign up for free Public ArcWeb Services. Given how popular the Google Maps API has been I hope these programmer will take a look at the ESRI ArcWeb API and give it a try. I think ESRI needs to set up a section (forums maybe) for these Public ArcWeb Services and link to it from this sign up page. You can learn more at the Public ArcWeb Services FAQ page.

  • GISUser.com on the 2005 ESRI UC Plenary

    Link – ESRI UC Report

    GISUser.com has their ESRI UC Report from the first day. It is a pretty detailed writeup of the proceedings, but they missed a huge announcement much like everyone else. I’m wondering what can be done to get ArcWeb more visible to users. Do people not understand what it can do or does the average ESRI user not care about web-based GIS?

  • On MSN Instant Messenger at the Plenary Session

    I’m on MSN Instant Messenger so if you want to say hi, just add “cageyjames@hotmail.com” to your contact list.

  • New Usability in ArcGIS 9.2

    Some great new usability features of 9.2.

    1. Add native Microsoft Excel spreadsheets as a table in the TOC. (w00t)
    2. New measure tool calculates length and area
    3. Calculate Acres directly from the table view, no longer do you have to add vba code to do this
    4. Sort the fields in the query dialog. I’ve never figured out the logic of the sorting of these fields, now I choose how they should be displayed.
    5. Limit zoom to extent to a data view.

  • New ArcIMS Design Tools

    The new ArcIMS designer tool looks great. The older Java tools have never really been updated in years. The new Designer is based on COM (I assume?) .NET and creates some really slick maps. It blows the Google Maps AJAX client out of the water and you can even use Visual Studio.net to create these maps. ArcIMS 9.2 is going to be a huge release and you won’t recognize the look of the maps created using it at all. I can’t wait to get into the ArcIMS API and see what new interfaces we can create.

  • Lunch with Brian and Steve

    I had lunch this afternoon (Sushi) with Brian Goldin and Steve Citron-Pousty. Took us a while to find a place that didn’t have a 30 minute wait, but eventually we did. I let both of them know how much I appreciated them blogging about ESRI and how hopefully more ESRI employees will take it up. I’m looking forward to the blogger meet up on Wednesday night and meeting more of ESRI’s bloggers as well as other GIS bloggers. Make sure you guys show up as we are all anxious to meet everyone face to face.