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Archive for the 'ESRI' Category Page 3 of 4



Free Resources For ArcGIS 9.3

The Mapperz blog posts about ESRI’s new Models and Scripts Gallery, a resource for sharing and downloading geoprocessing models and scripts for ArcGIS 9.3. There are similar galleries available for .Net, Javascript and Java code:

And the old resource page for Arcscripts is still available as well.




Reproject NOAA BSB Raster Navigation Charts And Export Them In TIFF Format

Yesterday, I posted about a NOAA site where you can download Raster Navigation Charts (RNC), maps of coastal and inland waterways. The charts are currently only available in BSB format, which many GIS programs can’t handle; I linked to a few free viewers that will let you view the maps, but not export them. They’re also only available in the Mercator NAD83 projection/datum. Peter Guth (the author of the terrain analysis GIS MicroDEM) let me know about a free utility available from NOAA called the Digital NOAA Nautical Chart Reprojector. It lets you re-project the BSB maps into one of 32 projections (e.g. geographic or UTM) and over 100 datums, then exports the chart in BSB, RAW or TIFF format with a world file; the latter virtually every GIS program and graphics editor can open. It looks like it was originally a command-line utility, since a DOS box pops up when you run the program, but it now comes with a GUI:

NOAA Chart Reprojector

The Input File and Output File dialog windows are a bit clumsy to use until you figure them out, but for the input file, you’re looking for the .kap file that came with the zip file you downloaded from the NOAA mapsite. Choose the desired output parameters at right, including choice of output file format (TIFF here), projection (UTM) and datum (WGS_84). The GUI doesn’t set the UTM zone automatically, but you’ll see the West and East Bounds for the map in the Input Info window at left, and can use those as a guide for setting the correct UTM zone with the Projection Parameters dropdown at right. In this case, clicking “Run” will create the TIF file specified as the output file, along with its worldfile. The file extension for that worldfile will be .tifw; if your GIS program doesn’t accept that, try changing it to the more-commonly seen .tfw extension.

NOAA also has a free extension called Chart Viewer that lets you open BSB charts natively in ESRI’s ArcView and ArcGIS, and Leica Geosystems’ Imagine.




Free ArcGIS Extensions For Municipal GIS Applications

In addition to their commercial products, MainStreetGIS has several free ArcGIS extensions available. The examples are oriented around municipal applications, but you can probably find other uses for some of them as well.

MainStreetAbutters: Choose a vector layer (point, line or polygon), a buffer distance for that layer, and a target layer. The extension will select features in the target layer within buffer distance of the buffer layer, and export them to another layer and/or a table or document file like an *.doc Word format file (the latter for use in merging with other documents like mailing labels, letters, etc.).

MainStreetSpatial: Selection of features in one layer based on their spatial relationship within another layer (intersection, lying within, etc.).

MainStreetVisibility: Stores a visibility setting (layer checkbox settings) for a project. Create multiple visibility settings forĀ  single project to turn multiple layers on and off.

MainStreetParcelSearch: Load a list of parcel IDs from a Parcel shapefile layer, select one, and have the map zoom to that parcel.

MainStreetStreetSearch: Load a list of street names from a Street shapefile field, select one, and have the map zoom to that street.

MainStreetAddressSearch: Loads a list of street names and street address numbers from a Parcel shapefile layer, then zooms to a selected street address on the map.

All extensions at the above links are for ArcGIS 9.x, but versions for 8.x are available on request from MainStreetGIS.




Geographic Time Animations

While I was writing the previous post on xls2kml, which has the ability to add time data to point placemarks in a Google Earth KML file, I got an email from someone who was looking for ways to create time-animated geographic displays. Digging through my brain and bookmarks, I came up with the following:

– If you have ArcGIS 9.2, there’s a free extension called TimeSlider from Applied Science Associates that lets you animated multiple data series that have associated dates or times. Haven’t tried it myself (I’m still stuck with 8.2).

TimeMap, from the University of Sydney’s Archaeological Computing Laboratory, creates time-based web mapping displays. From the “About” page:

“TimeMap TMJava is a novel mapping applet which generates complete interactive maps with a few simple lines of html. It provides a way of easily enriching web pages with historical or contemporary information that goes far beyond static jpg map images. It’s easy for beginners, yet provides completely customizable power and distributed backend database connectivity for the expert. It’s free for personal use.

TimeMap’s unique time-handling provides an engaging and intuitive method of delivering historical, community, government, research and business information. Combining mapping and the time dimension gives new ways of visualizing urban growth, the spread of empires, heritage sites, environmental change, weather patterns, traffic flow, earthquakes, mobile network faults, and much more ? ranging in time scale from millions of years to seconds.

TimeMap time-filters and animates maps on the fly, connects to datasets anywhere on the web and can search for and load thousands of local maps dynamically as you zoom and pan. TimeMap can filter huge datasets server-side and download only the data needed, or work standalone off a CD. It adapts legends dynamically as scale changes and generates hyperlinks on-the-fly between objects on the map and web pages, and is completely customizable with XML. Yet the applet weighs in at only 350K! ”

The TimeMap website has downloads, documentation, and sample applications. An open source version is on the way. Haven’t tried it this one yet either, but may post on it at greater depth in the future.

– Google Earth, of course, has added time-related coding to KML. But you still can’t add time information to data using the Google Earth application itself. Options for adding time coding are:

  • Add the time data manually to the KML file, as I did in my earlier sea level rise animations; this is currently the only option I know of for animating image overlays, and path/polygon KML files.
  • Use xls2kml to timecode point locations
  • Create a Google KML network link using Google Spreadsheets with timecoding added to point placemarks; Google has a tutorial page describing how to do this.
  • Create a KML network link to an EditGrid spreadsheet; OgleEarth has more info.
  • And I’m working on another way to create animated Google Earth KML files; more on this when it’s ready …

9/25/2007: Added info on EditGrid spreadsheets.




Get ESRI's ArcGIS 9.2 and ArcPad 7.01 Programs For Free

Yes, it’s true – you can get a fully-functional version of ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.2 for free, along with many of the extensions (3D Analyst, GeoStatistical Analyst, Survey Analyst, and more). The base version of ArcGIS costs about $1500, and extensions can run $1500 apiece. You can also get a fully functional version of ArcPad, ESRI’s mobile data acquisition and mapping GIS program for handheld GPS units that run Windows Mobile or Windows CE.

Of course there’s a catch – several in fact. For the evaluation version of ArcGIS:

For the evaluation version of ArcPad, the limitation is more basic: the program is fully functional, and doesn’t expire, but times out every 20 minutes. For many field data acquisition applications this might not be acceptable, but for those where data takes only a few minutes to acquire, you might be able to live with that 20-minute time limit indefinitely. At the very least, the evaluation version will give you all the time to learn the ins and outs of the software, and determine whether it meets your needs. If not, I’ll be covering a freeware PDA-based field data acquisition system in the future.

Edited to correct “ArcGIS 7.2” to “ArcGIS 9.2”; even free, 7.2 wouldn’t be worth it. Thanks, James!




Free ESRI Product Utilities

I suspect this isn’t new to most ESRI users out there, but the ESRI Developer Network hosts a large number of free, useful, downloadable utilities for most of ESRI’s current and former products at the Code Exchange (click on “Search ArcScripts” and select your desired product for the useful stuff). For example, here’s a direct link to a listing of 1130 utility scripts for ArcGIS Desktop.

Thanks to Valery Hronusov for the tip.




A Few More Free Toolsets For ArcGIS

Another in a series of posts on free toolsets for ESRI products. Today’s sets comes from Valery Hronusov, author of such useful paid tools as SuperOverlay (a stand-alone program for creating tiled raster image datasets for Google Earth), and KMLer (an extension for ArcGIS that exports data in KML format). The free tools are only for ArcGIS, versions 9 and higher.

Continue reading ‘A Few More Free Toolsets For ArcGIS’




Free Tools For ArcView And ArcGIS

Another set of free utilities for ESRI products, a complementary set to the ones from this previous post. This time they’re mainly for older versions of ArcView (but there’s a couple of more recent ArcGIS tools as well). Available here.