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Pee Dee GIS Users Group

SC GIS Professionals in the Pee Dee Area

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James Mccall

ArcGIS to Adobe Illustrator

Occasionally you might get a request to supply someone with a map that they can use in a Adobe Illustrator. ArcGIS gives you the tools you need to do this, but to avoid trial and error here’s a quick tip for outputting your map to an Adobe Illustrator compatible format.

Design your map in ArcGIS and once finished:

  1. Click File-Export Map
  2. In the Save as Type drop down, select EPS (*.eps)
  3. In the Options section, click the Format tab.
  4. Set your options as shown below.


By setting your output as shown the recipient will be able to work with your annotations and read them since using embedded fonts may cause issues in Illustrator.

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Spacial Joins and Selections

Issue: Doing a Spacial Join or Selection returns all items.

Description:
If you join a layer to a table you may be unable to use that layer in a spacial join to another layer. When using a layer with joins in ArcMap 9.3 you might encounter the issue where all the items in a layer are selected instead of the selection based on your criteria.

Solution:
The solution is to export the layer with the join to a separate layer file, then use that layer to do the spacial join/selection.

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ESRI ArcGIS Ideas Web site

ESRI has launched the ArcGIS Ideas Web site http://ideas.arcgis.com. This site offers users a place to contribute their ideas to ESRI and have the community discuss and vote on those ideas.

The ArcGIS Ideas Web site is intended for use by ESRI customers and the GIS community at large.

Another good one is http://resources.arcgis.com/, which is really all of our support and forums wrapped up under one site with some additional information.

Ed Yankowski
ESRI-Charlotte
South Carolina Account Manager
Office: 704.541.9810 x8670
Cell: 704.241.2966
eyankowski@esri.com

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South Carolina Pictometry User Group Agenda

If you aren’t on the mailing list and are planning to go to his, here’s the agenda.

  1. The date (April 15th) is a little more than 2 weeks away for the first of our annual Pictometry User Conference’s in Carolinas.  The second one will be held on May 27th in Charlotte North Carolina.  Many folks have already registered but there is still room for more people to attend.  We have lined up a very exciting program of speakers including current customers and Pictometry Technical Folks (See the newly released agenda attached).
  2. The day long event will be hosted by Palm Beach County at their Emergency Operations Center located @ 2500 City Hall Lane North Charleston, SC 29406 See map and oblique image below
  3. Remember, this is a free event (morning refreshments and lunch will be provided) and should be a fantastic opportunity for you to socialize and communicate with fellow Counties and /Cities, from across the Carolinas.
  4. To register for the event please contact Barry Grimes our Customer Relationship Representative via email at barry.grimes@pictometry.com or by phone at (585-487-1487). (We need you to register so we have a head count for lunch).  We look forward to having you there.
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Trimble Handheld Issues

Unit does not get IP address when docked
If you get an error on the Trimble that it cannot get an IP address, first disconnect the unit and reboot the PC. While the PC is rebooting press the power button and the reset button on the unit at the same time. Reconnect the unit when you have logged back into the PC and everything has loaded.

Blank Screen After Windows Splash
The Windows Mobile Device Driver can cause the PC to hang during boot. If this happens, remove the device from the cradle and reboot. If the PC boots successfully, you can place the Trimble back in it’s cradle.

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E-mail Alerts from VB application

Sending an e-mail via VB.Net can be done easily with the following code. You can also modify the code to send e-mail via an ASP web page.
Add this line in your declarations area.
Imports System.Net.Mail
Next, create a subroutine by entering the following code:
Public Sub SendEmail(ByVal strTo As String, ByVal strSubject As String, ByVal strMessage As String)

On Error GoTo SEerrTrap
Dim emailMsg As New MailMessage("fromEmail@wherever.com", strTo, strSubject, strMessage)

'Settings for using G-mail. Replace the url with the url or IP address of your mail server
'and the port number with "25" for an inhouse mail server.
Dim emailclient As New SmtpClient("smtp.gmail.com", "587") 

emailclient.EnableSsl = True 'Enables SSL. You likely will not need this unless you are using a G-Mail account to send mail.
emailMsg.IsBodyHtml = True 'Enables HTML e-mail bodies
emailMsg.Priority = MailPriority.High 'Sets the priority of the e-mail and how it appears on the recipients PC.
emailMsg.CC.Add("otherEmail@whereever.com")
emailMsg.Bcc.Add("BccOtherEmail@whereever.com")
emailclient.Credentials = New System.Net.NetworkCredential("userID", "password") 'User ID and password for the SMTP mail server
emailclient.Send(emailMsg)

Exit Sub
SEerrTrap:
     MsgBox(Now & " Error " & Err.Number & " " & Err.Description & " in SendEmail")
End Sub

Calling the subroutine with the appropriate variables included will send the e-mail via your SMTP server specified in the code.

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ESRI: Better Ways to Design and Share Maps – Seminars

From the ESRI website:

“As an ArcGIS software user, you’re already in the perfect position to use online resources to be more productive in your daily GIS practices.

Join us for this free half-day seminar that will walk you through available data and tools, as well as best practices, so you can better design and share maps.”

More info

Find a seminar near you.

Seminar dates:

4/6       Atlanta            74

4/20     Roanoke          10

5/4       Columbia         25

5/5       Richmond       30

5/11     Ft Lauderdale 62

5/13     Orlando           80

5/19     Raleigh            40

5/25     Memphis           7

5/27     Nashville         18

6/1       Jacksonville     13

6/3       Tallahassee      16

6/9       Montgomery   10

5/4       Fairfax             26

5/11     Norfolk           13

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Subscribe via E-mail?

Want to subscribe to the website via e-mail so that you are alerted when a new post or page is added? Well it’s easy, on the right hand side of the site there’s a box with a button below it entitled “subscribe”. Type in your e-mail address and click subscribe and you’ll start getting site news and posts as they happen!

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Florence County Pictometry Migrator

I mentioned this application at the previous meeting and wanted to post the docs associated with it to give users a feel for how it works and what it does.

Pictometry Data Migrator

The Pictometry Data Migrator(PDM) was developed to distribute layer data across an enterprise when SDE either will not work or isn’t practical. For example some environments might have difficulty with SDE 9.3 and the latest version of Pictometry, or you need to have a remote area supplied with local Pictometry data in case of network failures. The PDM allows you to set up a scheduled job within windows that will start the application and run in an automated manner and copy layers out to as many as four different server locations.

Requirements

  • Windows XP (Hasn’t been tested on Vista or 7)
  • Pictometry 2.7 R12
  • An ARCGIS model that builds the data files and deposits them on a network share.
  • A network share named “FCP_GIS” with a folder in it named “PictometryBaseUserData”

Features

  • Runs automatically when configured to work with Windows Scheduler
  • Populates up to 4 locations with Pictometry data
  • Runs in auto or manual mode.
  • Allows for the creation of automated or custom indexes on the data.
  • Data source can be customized without coding.Data destinations are currently hardcoded and must be changed to reflect updates to the server topology.

Installation(Florence County settings in blue)

Running the associated Setup.exe program will install the application and create a shortcut in the start menu under Florence County-Pictometry Data Migrator. The installation folder is “c:\Program Files\Florence County\PDM” .

Configuration

There are two INI files that are used with the PDM. Server.ini and Settings.ini. Server.ini is included with the application, but must be modified manually to indicate the source server where the Pictometry data resides. The server.ini file looks like this:

 [DataHost]
 serverName
Florence County’s Server.ini looks like this:

 [DataHost]
 flocogis

The Settings.ini is generated automatically when you set the program to run in Host mode.

Host or Guest Mode

The PDM can run in two different modes, Guest or Host. In guest mode you can open the application and make changes to the indexing of the data files or run the distribution manually. In host mode the PDM runs unattended once the application is launched.

When you check this box the program creates a file in the application folder called Settings.ini. If this file is deleted Host mode will be disabled until you check the Host PC box again.

Florence County’s Settings.ini looks like this:

 [Host]
 01-pln-0873

If you edit the Settings.ini file manually keep in mind that the machine name is case sensitive.

The application will check to make certain which mode it is set to run and notify the user at start up.

Main Screen

Departments

Once open you can see the four hardcoded options for a manual run. Unchecking the Departments will disable a manual update for that area.

Host PC

Checking this box will set the program to run automatically the next time it is launched. (Note: You will have 30 seconds after launch to disable the autorun, but you must uncheck the box and close the application for the change to take effect. Once reopened the application will be set back to guest.)

Run

When in Guest Mode double clicking this button will start the process manually for the departments selected. During the process the application will modify the Pictometry Batch File template with the appropriate path information for running the indexes as well as copy the updated layers and indexes to the selected departmental locations. Since the application cannot generate the indexes itself it will open EFS and load in a batch file using Pictometry’s EFS interface. (Note: This process will fail if the EFS window loses focus for any reason. For that reason it is recommended that this process run without any other applications open that might take focus away from the program.

Set Indexes

Clicking the Set Indexes button opens the Index Chooser screen.

This screen looks in the datasource folder you previously created and reads the XML files describing the contents of each shape file. Certain field names are auto selected and the user can add to these by clicking the others or subtract from them by unchecking the fields. (Note: The auto selection of fields is based on Florence County’s current schema. If your schema is different or it changes, the auto selection process will not work and you will have to manually select the fields to index.)

Clicking the close button the screen closes without saving the indexes to be built. Clicking Send Indexes sets the indexes to be built in a Pictometry batch file template and closes the screen.

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