ArcGIS Explorer Blog : ArcGlobe

Explorer at GITA

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:56:00 GMT

Over the last couple of posts we've covered ArcGIS Explorer at the Petroleum User Group (PUG) Conference and also the Federal User Conference (FedUC). We're now at GITA, and here's a quick recap of what was presented at last night's ESRI dinner reception, and what will be hightlighted in the ESRI booth on the showroom floor.

Once again Explorer's ability to add a variety of internet content and local data sources was highlighted. For many users this is essential, as many already publish services using ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server, and have wide variety of local data that must be integrated.

The City of Riverside is shown below with a 3D model of a substation. The substation is part of a citywide 3D landscape that was authored in ArcGlobe and published as an ArcGIS Server globe service. Also shown is part of the street scene, showing some of the 3D objects (trees, cars, poles) from the ArcGlobe 3D library, as well as several buildings designed using Sketchup.

Utility assets such as hydrants, poles, pipes, valves, and others can be linked to files like geo-tagged photos shown below. These linked and integrated documents can includes videos, diagrams, work orders, and other files.

A geoprocessing tool was authored that performs network tracing on the electrical network based on a trouble call location, identifying upstream and downstream infrastructure and devices that may be affected.

Explorer at the FedUC

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:25:00 GMT

Last week marked ESRI's Federal User Conference in Washington, D.C. During the plenary on Tuesday a variety of ESRI software and applications were showcased, including ArcGIS Explorer. We've had a few requests to recap what was shown in a little more detail, so here's the overview of the ArcGIS Explorer plenary presentation.

First, the new Resource Center (introduced with Explorer 440) was highlighted by adding one of the newly published results - State Capitals - and showing the popup links to the USGS Science In Your Backyard Web site for each result. From there the Physical Features layer was added to the map, with a demonstration of the swipe and transparency tools. Shown below is the swipe tool being used with the seamless USGS topographic map layer that is included in the service.

The next part of the presentation showcased Explorer's ability to connect to and integrate a wide variety of different content services, each published through different servers at locations throughout the US. The layers included:

several ArcGIS Online layers
an ArcIMS service from the ESRI Geography Network
a WMS services found via the FGDC clearinghouse
an ArcGIS Server map service (population growth by county)
a dynamic weather map service that updates every 15 minutes. The weather data is collected in an enterprise geodatabase (ArcSDE) via a connection to a Meterologix weather service, and published as an ArcGIS Server map service. The Explorer layer properties were set to update every 15 minutes to match the updates on the server.
an ArcGIS Server globe service (hurricane tracks)

Added to the map was a stamp of "confidential." This was done using the new Display Overlay property added to Explorer 440. Go to File, then Map Properties, and look for the Display Overlay property. The overlay can be placed at a variety of different locations, and is a great way to include your company logo with your map.

Next, Explorer's ability to add a variety of local data sources was highlighted. Shown in the map below are a raster file (the historical map), a file geodatabase (Oregon county polygons), a shapefile (airport locations), and a KMZ file from the NRCS Web site (Snotel precipitation and snow levels). Also shown is the KML/Z popup window.

The airport symbol is part of Explorer's new billboarded point symbol set. These are optimized for performance, so even though there are many 10s of thousands of airports worldwide (see below) the navigation speed is not impacted significantly.

The city of Portland was visited next, with a 3D cityscape of the downtown area. The buildings were authored using ArcGlobe, extruding building footprints based on attributes containing elevation. Also shown are tax lots (an ArcGIS Server map service) and a link to a YouTube video showing a walking tour through Portland.

Several tasks were demonstrated, including a few of the default tasks (powered by ArcGIS Online) and a Weather Finder task downloaded from the Explorer Resource Center. Finally, a custom service area analysis task was used to determine drive time service areas, shown below as a red polygon. The geoprocessing task was authored using ArcGIS Desktop, and published via ArcGIS Server.

Authoring and Publishing Your Own 3D Buildings for Explorer

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:16:00 GMT

We've recently had a couple of questions regarding how to author and publish your own 3D buildings that you can use in Explorer. It's simple to do -- author your map using ArcGIS Desktop, publish/serve it using ArcGIS Server, and then connect to the service to begin using it in Explorer. Here's how it's done:

Step 1: Author your map

Since what we want to author is a 3D service, we'll choose ArcGlobe as our authoring environment. ArcGlobe is part of the ArcGIS Desktop 3D Analyst product. Here we've started ArcGlobe, and have added our shapefile of building footprints, which in this case covers downtown Boston. We've zoomed in to those buildings, and removed the Continents and World Image layers (which are part of the ArcGlobe startup data) since we won't need them.

Next, we'll change how the buildings are symbolized. One of the buildings layer attributes is elevation. A handy technique to come up with some interesting visualization effects is to shade the buildings using the elevation attribute and using graduated colors. You can experiment with various color ramps and schemes. The more subtle light-to-dark single color ramps are perhaps more realistic, but here we've chosen a wilder color scheme for added drama.

Since we want to publish a 3D service, next we'll click the Globe Extrusion tab in the layer properties and extrude the buildings, using the elevation field again as the extrusion values.

We're now finished authoring, and will save our map which we have called "Boston Downtown.3dd."

Step 2: Publish your map

The next step will be to publish our newly authored map using ArcGIS Server. Your exact procedure for doing this may differ (due to firewall configurations or whether you have to work with other departments - like your IT group - to publish something) but in the simplest case you're literally just a mouse click away from publishing a 3D service.

Here we've started ArcCatalog directly from ArcGlobe, and navigated to our previously saved ArcGlobe map (Boston Downtown.3dd). To publish this map we simply right-click it and chose Publish to ArcGIS Server.

A wizard will allow you to specify the server, the name of the service, and it's folder. Here's we've just accepted our defaults. After this step, click Next to review your results, and we're finished.

Step 3: Connect

We've now completed both the authoring and publishing, all we need to do now is connect to the server and add the service to our Explorer map. Here we've started Explorer, and zoomed in to the Boston area using the Place Finder task. Next we choose Open, then Servers, and enter the URL to connect to the server that is now publishing our new Boston Downtown 3D buildings.

And here's how things look in ArcGIS Explorer.

We've taken the simplest path to authoring and publishing a service, but as you can see it's easy to do and took less than 10 minutes. You may want to refine your map service by adding scale dependencies or other layers during the authoring process, or by generating Server cache at specific scales. Refer to the ArcGIS Server documentation for more information on these topics.