Working on doing some advanced ArcGIS server printing and had the need to batch convert many existing .mxd files to .lyr files. So instead of opening up X number of map documents, thought I would do it via code. All of my .mxds in this case had just one data frame so the process was pretty simple–I add an empty group layer (Thanks Petr Krebs for the idea), copy all the existing layers into it, and save it out as a layer file.

Discovered something today. I was working on an arcpy script that copies a raster dataset from a file geodatabase into a Postgres SDE geodatabase and then does some boring routine tasks–building stats, creating a mosaic dataset, adding the raster to the mosaic dataset and making a couple referenced mosaic datasets. It sometimes has trouble with the initial step of uploading the raster because of the sheer size of if (1m elevation raster for counties) and it failed today on one.

For some odd reason, I wanted to split all the arcs in a polyline feature class to a specific length–if a specific feature was longer than the target length, it would become two or more separate polyline records. Here is the bare-bones script that copies an existing feature class into a new feature class then processes each record, splitting it into multiple records if the polyline is longer than the user-specified tolerance.

During a process I was working on, I needed to compare a feature class before and after some edits. I did not quickly find anything in ArcToolbox but searching ArcResources led me to Change Detector script by Bruce Harold. After making a couple of tweaks–for some reason in one of my feature classes, the Shape field had an upper case ‘S’ and in the other it was a lower case ’s'.

Related to my post on how I enable a script to accept parameters from different sources, I also often set up pythons scripts to output information a variety of ways. This is largely due to the fact that some are called by ArcToolbox scripts. Running in ESRI’s domain, these scripts need to send the output through the arcgisscripting object but if you are running the python outside the ArcGIS framework, you can just print.

I just happened to stumble upon an update of a tool to Create Geologic Cross Sections, eXacto Section v. 2.0, that I mentioned in July. Jennifer Carrell at the Illinois Geological Survey wrote this tool. The latest update is from December 8, 2010 and can be downloaded at ESRI’s ArcGIS Resource Center. Our office has used previous versions and finds in very useful in creating cross-sections. I have not tried this latest update.

The Create Geologic Cross Sections–eXacto Section v. 2.0, ArcMap 9.3 written by Jennifer Carrell of the Illinois State Geological Survey is a handy tool for creating cross sections. It requires ArcGIS and a 3D Analyst Extension license. You can create profiles against multiple DEMs at once, define the vertical exaggeration, and have it include contact points. It is well documented and comes with sample data to use with the tutorial.