A collection of various GIS related links, information and other GIS blogs.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
OK - so this isn't really GIS related, but I thought these tools from Microsoft might be useful sometime:
Word Viewer 2003
Brief Description: View, print and copy Word documents, even if you don't have Word installed.
------------------------------------- Excel Viewer 2003Brief Description: Open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed.
--------------------------------------- PowerPoint Viewer 2003Brief Description: PowerPoint Viewer 2003 lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Working with Excel files in ArcGIS:
If you have a lot of formatting like merged cells and such in your excel files, you will want to take advantage of 'named extents' that identify just the cells with real data in them.
Here are some notes from the ArcGIS 9.2 Web help on working with Excel files...
You can open Microsoft Excel tables directly in ArcGIS and work with them like other tabular data sources. For example, you can add them to ArcMap, preview them in ArcCatalog, and use them as inputs to geoprocessing tools.
Excel files are added to ArcMap like other data, through the Add Data dialog box. When you browse to an Excel file, you will need to choose which table you want to open. For example, if you have an Excel workbook called sales_figures.xls that contains three worksheets—Sales, Month, and Year to date—each worksheet is a separate table in ArcGIS. Any name references to cells or ranges defined in Excel are preserved in ArcGIS.
When accessed from ArcGIS, a worksheet is shown as a table with a $ at the end of its name, but a named range does not have a $. Worksheets or named ranges with names containing spaces have single quotation marks placed around the table name.
Once added to ArcMap, you can open the table from the Source tab of the table of contents. However, you will not be able to edit the table or export records to an Excel format.
Read the help topic for more information...
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
I get a lot of questions about the new Cadastral Editor being released soon (9.2 SP3), so I thought I'd post some general information about it that was published in the UC 2007 Q&A. Sorry for the length of the post, but I thought I'd just put it all out here for review:
Q: What is the cadastral fabric dataset?
A cadastral fabric is a new type of dataset in the geodatabase used to represent and hold data for a continuous surface of connected parcels. Parcel boundary line dimensions in the cadastral fabric match the dimensions on the survey record. Dimensions in the cadastral fabric are edited when corrections need to be made to match the survey record. A parcel split adds two new parcels to the fabric and maintains the original parcel as historic. In fact, whenever parcels are edited or replaced by new survey records, the existing survey information is retained as historic thus always preserving the original survey record.
- A cadastral fabric dataset in the geodatabase is made up of these key feature layers: Parcel lines, which store and preserve recorded boundary dimensions
- Parcel points, which store X, Y, Z coordinates. The X and Y vertices are derived from a Least Squares Adjustment.
- Parcel polygons, defined by parcel lines
- Line points, which are parcel corner points that lie on the boundaries of adjacent parcels
- Control points, which have accurate, published coordinates for a physical location
In addition, tabular information used in the cadastral editing workflow is also maintained as part of the cadastral fabric dataset. This includes:
- Plans, which store information about the record of survey
- Fabric jobs, which track edits to the cadastral fabric
- Accuracies, which are used to derive weights that are used in Least Squares Adjustments
- Adjustment vectors used to store displacement vectors derived from Least Squares Adjustments that are used to rubber sheet and update other related feature layers that map onto the cadastral fabric (such as buildings, utilities, and so forth)
UC 2007 Questions and Answers - a Must Read:
Every year ESRI gets a lot of questions via the User Conference surveys. And yes, it is true that Jack reads every single one. As do many other ESRI staff. Many of the questions asked find their way into this Q&A document that Jack and others take a lot of effort to answer fully.
There is a lot of very helpful information in this document, both for new and existing users.
There are 146 questions anwered this year, so it takes some time to get through - but I do recommend that you make the time.
Heads up Color Proofing for ESRI Style's Colors:
Posted on the ESRI Mapping Center on June 28, 2007
Here's a useful little map document called ColorPalette_ArcGIS.mxd that I put together to anticipate the variation between colors on my monitor and the printers and plotters in the office. It contains no geographic data, only graphics that correspond to the standard color palette in ArcGIS. Each color swatch is labeled by name and by CMYK values. I print a copy from each printer and hang them near my monitor so I can choose colors for my layout based on what they look like on paper, not just based on what the colors look like on my monitor. Someday everything may be perfectly calibrated with a color matching system like Pantone. Until then, this helps - and it makes great cubicle wall paper!
Jenny Reiman East-West Gateway Council of Governments
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