ArcGIS Explorer Blog : Resource Center

ArcGIS Explorer Community resources

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:10:00 GMT

Whether you're learning the basics of the latest release or looking to create your own add-in using the SDK, the ArcGIS Explorer Community offers a wide variety of useful information. These include this blog, the Explorer Gallery, a Media Gallery, peer-to-peer discussion and help forums, and the Knowledge Base.

Just go to the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center and click Community.

Results on the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:55:00 GMT

We've covered note results quite a bit here on the blog; they're very useful and can integrate all sorts of different content on your map. Here's a couple of blog posts to check out if you've not done so already:

Creating and Using Notes

Adding Photos and More to Note Popups

The ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center also has a collection of results you can click and access directly. All of these are authored using the various methods covered in the blog posts listed above. Two found on the Resource Center that we took a closer look at in this video are the US Highest and Lowest Points, and NPS Air Quality. Check out the video:

Exploring New Resource Center Results and Tasks

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:59:00 GMT

The Explorer Resource Center has been expanded with the release of Explorer 440, and now includes results and tasks that you can add directly to your map. Choose File > Resource Center to open the Contents tab, and then click Results or Tasks to view them.

Click any of the listed results or tasks, and they'll be added to your map. Here we've chosen to add the Sate Capitals and Facts, which includes links to the USGS Science in Your Backyard Web site with more information on each state.

What's the Weather? Find out with the Weather Finder

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Another useful and interesting custom task (written by Michael Waltuch) is found in the Community Showcase section of the Explorer Resource Center. It's a good example of a custom task that leverages an available Web service for use within Explorer.

Weather Finder locates the nearest weather station to a specified location and reports its most recent weather observations. The task is based on a reverse geocoding web service located at GeoNames.org. To learn more about GeoNames go to their web site and see the service description.

To use the task, first go the the Community Showcase, locate the task, and click to add it to Explorer.

We can activate the task and click on our map to find the current weather, or we can use a result as the input location. Let's use Find Place to locate Manhattan.

Now that we've found Manhattan, we'll right click the result and use Send To and choose Weather Finder from the list (we also could have done this via the result popup window).

Now that Manhattan is the Weather Finder search location, click Find. The nearest weather station will be located, and we'll automatically zoom to it. In this case the nearest weather station is found in Central Park.

The popup window associated with the weather station includes a link to the National Weather Service's Telecommunication Operations Center which includes a 24 hour summary for the weather station.

You can also click the link in the popup to show the National Weather Service's Web site for this location. Here we see that currently it's a balmy 57 degrees in Central Park under overcast skies, with 6-mile visibility and calm winds.

Find Nearby Task

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:24:00 GMT

Here's another addition to the Community Showcase, one of the destinations on the Explorer Resource Center. This task is from Michael Waltuch of the Explorer Development Team, who also authored the Find GNIS task that we recently blogged about.

Find Nearby locates feature types you select that are within a specified radius of a place on the map. The task queries a subset of the features found in the large, international database maintained at GeoNames.org.

Here we've used the Find Address task to locate our favorite spot: 380 New York Street, Redlands CA. By right-clicking the result we can use Send To to use it as the input location for Find Nearby.

Now with the address as our input location, we can search for hotels within 10 miles of ESRI.

And here's our results:

Find GNIS Task

bszukalski — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:41:00 GMT

A Find GNIS task has recently been added to the Community Showcase on Explorer's Resource Center. This task was authored by Michael Waltuch of the Explorer development team, who would also like to acknowledge Dwight S. Hughes of the USGS for his invaluable help.

For those not familiar with the GNIS, the USGS Web site states:

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, contains information about physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and associated areas, both current and historical (not including roads and highways). The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the location of the feature by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates.

The task queries the GNIS database and returns results that locate physical and cultural geographic features of all types in the United States and associated areas. To return results, select a state or territory name, a county or sub-unit name (optional), and a feature type you’re interested in. There are over 1.98 million features of 65 types in the GNIS.

The task is easy to access from the Resource Center, just open it from Explorer (click Help, then ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center...) and then click the Share tab, then scroll down the list until you see it. Just click, and it will be added to your Explorer tasks.

Here's an example query shown in the Find GNIS task:

And here's the result:

New Layers Tab on Resource Center

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:26:00 GMT

Among the new features in Build 410 is the revamped ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center. The Resource Center now includes a Contents tab that provides easy access to both maps and layers.

What's the difference? Well choosing a map will replace your existing map; in other words it's like opening a new document in ArcMap or Word. Choosing a layer will just add the chosen layer to your existing map, just like adding a layer to ArcMap. Just click on the thumbnail or name. Click description to view more information about each map or layer.

Previously, to add a layer you needed to connect directly to the ArcGIS Online servers using a provided URL, user name, and password. Based on your feedback, we've redesigned things so that adding layers is easier than ever before.

Connecting to ArcGIS Online to Use Individual Services

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:49:00 GMT

Recently we've had a few questions on how to access individual ArcGIS Online services with Explorer. So we thought we'd review how you can do that, and provide you the connection information here. Starting with the next release of Explorer you will no longer need to follow these steps, but in the meanwhile, here's how to access them.

First, pre-published maps for Explorer can be opened directly from the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center. The Resource Center can be opened by choosing Help > ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center.

When you click to open one of these maps it will replace your current map (just like opening a new map document in ArcGIS Desktop).

These pre-published Explorer maps are composed of a variety of separate ArcGIS Online services. Rather than open a completely new map, you can add these services individually to your current Explorer map.

To access the individual ArcGIS Online services you need to create a new ArcGIS Server connection using the Add Content dialog in Explorer. To create the connection, use the following:

URL: http://services.arcgisonline.com/v92
User Name: arcgis_beta
Password: beta

Check the box to remember the user name and password so you won't be prompted for these in the future. Once the connection is established you will see a list of all available ArcGIS Online services grouped into several different folders. Just click to add any of them to your map.

It's Your World, and Welcome To It

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:01:00 GMT

You might be wondering where the "world" or globe that you see when you first start ArcGIS Explorer comes from. It's actually one of many globes that you can choose to open that are part of ArcGIS Online. ArcGIS Online is a new family (in fact it's still in beta) of online content and other services hosted by ESRI. These are free for ArcGIS Desktop users, which includes ArcGIS Explorer. ArcGIS Online also publishes 2D and 3D basemaps for ArcMap, ArcGlobe, and ArcReader. You can find other ArcGIS Online globes at the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center. To navigate there, click Help and choose the Resource Center, or click File > Open and then choose OK.

To learn more about each globe, click its name. You'll see a short description, and for more details you can click the link at the top of the description to navigate to the ArcGIS Online site where each is described in more detail. For more information, you can visit the ArcGIS Online product site.