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Arc Explorer Demo

Tuesday, April 15, 2008


Introductions

Dave Hoover, ASTC, Boise, Idaho
Bob Kukachka, Soil Scientist, Soda Springs, Idaho

Overview

Many have been using Google Earth or Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Pro no longer licensed in many locations ($350 cost)

Google Earth not authorized for use on NRCS computers

Search for alternatives

 

Need for quick and easy visualization of the earth

Need for overlay of NRCS features such as point and polygon data

 

Arc Explorer part of our enterprise license with ESRI

Similar functionality along with the ArcInfo integration

It is also available for your home use for additional practicing

This Session

We're going to give you an overview of this software, a few specifics, and even a glimpse into the future of the software

There will be a recording of this with an email sent out as to its location on the Idaho pages


Remember that:

This is a still a beta release so a few glitches

We've selected a lower image quality for quicker Live Meeting display but still there is 1 meter imagery for all the United States and good quality on the digital quad maps

Please say "slower" if we start flipping screens too quick, this is a live connection to Arc Explorer as we want you to get a feel for the speed of a thin client connection to a geodata server

File\Map Properties

Maps Tab
  1. Description

In addition to a copyright statement, you can add descriptive information about the map, its purpose, lineage, authorship, etc.  This descriptive information could include map metadata and any other information pertinent to the map display.

  1. Authentication
If the map you are working with contains data from secure services that require user identification, checking this option will save any specified user credentials with the map.
Effects Tab
  1. On Open

Check the panel's checkbox and specify whether the map will spin continuously on its natural axis (Spin the globe) until you click the mouse or zoom in from space to the extent of the map when the map was last saved (Zoom in on the globe). Note that these settings take effect the next time you open the map.  Your preference.

  1. Sun Position

Leave blank – no effect on the imagery

  1. Environment

Environment settings provide the means of adding an atmospheric halo and stars to the map which can be seen in the view of the globe from space as well as on the horizon when looking from on or above the surface.  I chose to leave them both selected. The performance doesn’t seem to be affected.

  1. Fog & Clouds

For most uses I would leave them off.  They will slow down rendering speed.  For screen captures the effects could add more realism.  Also, displaying clouds requires a connection to an external server specific to that use.

  1. Vertical Exaggeration – Based on a 30m DEM

When you change the vertical exaggeration setting, you change the way the application renders the Z values of the elevation data for the current map and consequently affects all map layers. Setting this value to an extreme may produce undesirable results for some data.  There does not seem to be a reset to the default Z value of the DEM.  A setting of about the first tick mark on the 0-10 bar scale should be close.  When the Vertical Exaggeration is changed it can affect any screen captures you have previously saved.

Tools\Options

Application Tabs

  1. Startup – Defaults to the last map saved but can be set to another map located at…
     
  2. Layer Appearance
  • Swipe behavior – either the selected layer and all those above it or just the selected layer
  • Transparency behavior – applied to the selected layer or to selected layer and all those above it
  1. Proxy Server and My Tasks – A proxy server is a computer on your LAN that connects to the Internet without compromising the security of your internal network. If your organization uses a proxy server to connect to the Internet, you need to configure ArcGIS Explorer so that it can connect to GIS servers on the Internet through the proxy server. When configuring a proxy server, all Internet connections to GIS servers (both ArcGIS and ArcIMS servers) will utilize this proxy server. This is where you would link to an IMS for map data and predefined tasks
  1. Open Content Settings - When you use the Open Content dialog box to select content to add to the map you make use of its Open Data wizard to specify parameters appropriate to the data type added. To streamline this process for yourself or if you are a site administrator, for your users, you can store the information for specific data types that you or they routinely add by changing the Open Content Settings options to determine how the application will handle all or specific content types. With the option enabled, once you establish settings for a supported content type, such as a shapefile, the most recently set parameter values will be used the next time you add content of that type and the relevant dialog boxes will not appear.

View Tabs

  1. Map Display
  • Navigator – set position on display and visibility
  • Positional Text – displays where you are and at what elevation (we are not sure what elevation is being reported and it seems to only read out in miles)
  • Target Position – the plus sign in the middle of the screen – can display the nearest city or county if checked.
  • Surface Avoidance – when this box is checked you can not fly into the side of a hill or mountain.
  1. Flight Characteristics – how you move from point to point in the map
  • Flying to – can set speed that program will use (in latest build can jump directly to selected feature)
  • Route Following – can set flying parameters that follow a predetermined route
  1. Cache
  • Disk Cache – ArcExplorer caches a lot of data – I have set my cache to 2GB but have rarely seen it go over 1GB.  This parameter can be changed at any time but it is much better to have too much than not enough.
  • Memory Cache – ESRI recommends the computer have 2GB of RAM.  Working on a county wide or larger project will eat up the RAM allocated to increase draw speeds.  You can monitor this cache and fine tune it to your user needs.  The most important? Value is that assigned to the image, set that as high as your computer will allow but not less than about 500MB.  As soon as you run out of RAM all data will be written to disk thus slowing down the operation.
  1. Mouse
  • Buttons – in this window you can set the navigation speed, how the Pan function operates, and the middle wheel zoom operation.  Similar to ArcGIS.
  • Gesture – if enabled allows you to set the distance the mouse has to be moved to start flying over the map.
  1. Units
  • This is where you set the type of coordinates to display on the bottom of the view screen, in the identify window, and in the results window.  UTM is not an option at this time.

Adding data

Two ways of adding data to look atOne is off the ESRI server and the other is your own data on either your own system or on a geodata server of your own

I'll go over the ESRI server data first

It's accessed by the File / Resource Center option

There are:

  • Maps

  • Layers

  • Tasks

  • and Results

I'll show what I consider the most common layers

  • Transportation

  • Boundaries and Places

  • US Topo Maps

  • Imagery

Next I'll show adding your own personal data

It's accessed by the File / Open option
Several different types of files can be accessed

ArcGIS Explorer files – those saved by a user during an Arc Explorer session

Servers – access to your own or public geodata servers

File Geodatabases – a fairly new spatial format for common geodata themes

Shapefiles – the nontopological format of many NRCS data layers

I'll talk just a minute on shapefiles since they are a common format for NRCS users

You'll notice that ARC coverages are not listed so if you want to view something in only a coverage you'll need to convert it to a shapefile first in Arc

There are only a few options for importing a shapefile and those deal with the scale at which it will be displayed, the disk caching options and the symbology

Rasters – pixel based geodata from ERDAS, MrSID, GeoTIFF, JPEG, etc.

KML – this is the Keyhole Markup Language files many of us created for use in Google Earth – KMZ or the uncompressed KML or even the pathway to a server KMZ file – some limitation in the additional KML data we created – must be added as KML Content – read up

Viewing Data – Moving around - Bob

  1. Left mouse click, hold, and drag

Works similarly to Google Earth, ArcGIS, ArcView, etc.  The map image will be dragged in the direction the mouse moves.

  1. Scroll wheel – 2 Functions
  • Roll forward and backwards to zoom in and zoom out
  • Push down and move mouse to tilt and pan
  1. Right mouse click, hold, and drag – Flying Mode
  • Rotate left and right
  • Fly forward and backward at a constant altitude but if terrain avoidance is enabled you will not run into anything.
  1. Using the Navigator
  • The Navigator has two modes. It first appears on the display in its Indicator mode. Indicator mode displays the orientation of the map; it's a dynamic graphic that shows you which direction represents North and the degree to which the map has been tilted. Note that the control is transparent and so the background you see on your map may be different.  The Navigator shares several of the same functions as the mouse and has some reset functions including reset tilt, sets North to top of map, and go to full extent of the map.
  1. Swipe
  • Use Swipe to reveal layers beneath the layer you chose to swipe and, depending on how you've set your Options, the layers above it. This command makes it easy to quickly see what is underneath a particular layer without having to turn it off in the table of contents or reorder layers.

Query Tools

Measuring

Point

Saving results
Right click options on the saved point

Two-end point lines

Saving results
Right click options such as flight

Multi-turn lines

Saving results
Right click options such as flight

Not much else available under this version but area measurements are in Build 450

Screen Shots, Export – Bob

  1. To capture the current screen contents press Ctrl + c.  This copies the screen to the windows clipboard where it can be pasted into other applications such as; Power Point, Word, email, etc.
     
  2. From the top menu choose File/Save As to save the current map.  Default directory is:
  • C:\Documents and Settings\Your.Name\My Documents\ArcGIS Explorer Documents\Maps
  • Optionally you can save the map wherever it is most convenient.

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