Explorer Desktop Tag
Virtual 3D cities and geodesign in 3D are hot topics these days, and at the recent Esri Partner Conference and Developer Summit lead product engineer Mark Bockenhauer demonstrated some interesting capabilities which can potentially make your entire virtual city, including the software used to view and analyze it, completely portable – even pocketable.
Over the last couple of days at the 2012 Esri Partner Conference and Developer Summit we’ve had a number of questions about ArcGIS Explorer Desktop and the road ahead. If you’re at the DevSummit this afternoon Mark Bockenhauer and Jim Barry will present and demonstrate some of the new features coming up in the Explorer Desktop 2012 release at the Getting Started with ArcGIS Explorer Desktop SDK session.
National Geographic and Esri have collaborated to produce this cartographically distinctive basemap that reflects National Geographic’s cartographic design, typographic style, and map policies.
This basemap provides a visually appealing background for web mapping applications for mobile users, consumers, and educational purposes, and is also well suited as a general reference map for many GIS projects.
This National Geographic World Map has been added to the collection of existing ArcGIS Online basemaps that users can access freely for internal and external use.
Get more details about this map and start using it today.
Registration is now open for the 2012 Esri Developer Summit. The summit will be in Palm Springs, CA March 26-29, 2012.
This is the developer event for ArcGIS. Plan now to attend and get the inside developer details on ArcGIS 10.1
NOAA’s IncidentNews website provides information about oil and hazardous material spills where NOAA has been involved in the response. The website is maintained by NOAA’s Emergency Response Division (ERD) and includes a GeoRSS feed that you can connect to using ArcGIS Explorer Desktop to map and learn more about recent events. Let’s take a closer look at how to use the feed.
At the website you’ll find a list of recent events; click an event to learn more about it. At the time we’re writing this post the latest event is a disabled ship carrying 98,000 gallons of fuel oil, and 2,800 gallons of diesel fuel near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. NOAA was contacted for a trajectory analysis for a potential release of oil later today.
Wanting to map the incidents, we discovered the Newsfeed section with both Atom and RSS feeds.
To connect to the feed right-click to copy the link (either link will do), and in Explorer Desktop click Add Content, then GIS Services…
Click New Server Connection
Then choose GeoRSS from the drop-down list:
Paste the feed URL into the connection input box. Since the feed is dynamic, we decided to have it automatically refresh. Below we chose to trigger a refresh of the feed every 10 minutes:
Once connected, you can edit the layer properties to change the name, symbol, and more. Here’s our map showing the disabled ship off the Oregon coast with information about the incident from the feed displayed in the popup window.
For more information see the Subscribe to GeoRSS feeds help topic.
A new version of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop (build 1750) has just been released. See the ArcGIS Explorer blog for more information.
Check these locations to download the latest version:
ArcGIS Explorer Desktop is a free, downloadable GIS viewer that provides an easy way to explore, visualize, share, and present geographic information. The latest release of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop (build 1750) delivers fixes and improvements to the previous release. See this previous blog post for a list of new features and capabilities introduced with Explorer 1700.
Check these locations to download the latest version:
ArcGIS Explorer Desktop is a free, downloadable GIS viewer that provides an easy way to explore, visualize, share, and present geographic information. The latest release of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop (build 1750) delivers the following fixes and improvements to the previous release. See our previous blog post for a list of new features and capabilities introduced with Explorer 1700.
- SDE connection passwords are now stored in the map by default
- The popup window displays information from joined tables
- Import of GPX files has been improved for faster performance
- Popups for multiple layers now includes the layer name
- GPS and geotagged photo locations using commas in place of decimals (for non-English locales) are now supported
- The busy cursor is displayed when waiting for popup information to return
- Map transformations are applied correctly when creating map content, viewing KML, and geotagging photos
- ArcGIS services with reverse proxy or virtualized configurations are now supported in 2D mode
- Rasters from ArcSDE no longer cause failure when clicking the tools tab
- When connecting to a GPS receiver the options dialog is now displayed when the device is not detected
- Go to in 2D display mode zooms completely to all features
- GeoRSS layer popups have been enhanced for better formatting
- You can now upload KML to your ArcGIS Online account directly from Explorer Desktop
- Maptips for feature layers are displayed when enabled
- Find stops searching when there is no match
- ArcGIS Explorer will not crash when opening a webmap from ArcGIS Online
- Fixed Measure Point latitude/longitude formatting
We recently came across this interesting article covering the use of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop by Wes Bernardini, associate professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Redlands, to visualize 3D reconstructions of 32 Hopi villages. An ArcGIS Explorer add-in is used to explore tribal villages and nearby visible peaks. The article also includes a YouTube video demonstration of the customized Explorer.
There is a new release of ArcGIS Explorer Desktop. The build 1700 is now available for download and has several new features and improvements. Checkout this blog post on the ArcGIS Explorer blog to learn more about the new release.
ArcGIS Explorer is a free, downloadable GIS viewer that provides an easy way to explore, visualize, share, and present geographic information.
The latest release of ArcGIS Explorer builds upon previous releases and adds new features that make it a great choice for providing wider access to your geographic information and GIS capabilities. These new features include the following:
GPS Integration
Any GPS device (NMEA compliant) can be connected to ArcGIS Explorer to collect data. GPS data can be collected at the click of a button, or collected at specified regular time intervals. Explorer also includes tools to manage and display waypoints, tracks, and routes, which are stored and managed as notes.
Spatial Selection
Any shape can be used to query features using spatial operators like contains, intersects, within, and more. Existing notes can be used, or you can interactively draw a shape as input for the spatial query.
Raster Georeferencing
When adding raster files (TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP), if the coordinate system has not yet been defined the user will be prompted to georeference the raster by interactively establishing reference points from the raster to the basemap.
Geotagging
Photos that are already geotagged can be added directly to the map. Non-geotagged photos can be interactively geotagged. The geotagged photo is used as the marker symbol and the popup will automatically display the photo.
Legends in Contents
Legends can now be displayed directly in the table of contents by clicking the layer name (formerly they were displayed in a separate window).
Portal Connections
Connections to portals other than ArcGIS Online (on-premises ArcGIS Portals) can be managed via the portal connection manager. When connected to a different portal, functions such as Add From ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Online searches work directly against the specified portal.
Other Features and Improvements
- Improved sublayer control; you can toggle on/off sublayers after connecting to the service
- KML improvements, including spatial selection against KML
- Query by attribute for layer packages is now supported
- Control-click supported to toggle all layers in the map
- Shift-drag now defines zoom box in both 2D and 3D mode
- Separators can now be added to tabs in application configurations to enable better tool organization
- Improved layer cache management; layer tools now include refresh for individual layers
- Updates for ArcGIS Online
- Use in terminal servers (e.g., Citrix Xen App) now supported
- Updated help, and miscellaneous bug fixes
For more information and to download ArcGIS Explorer:
ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center
ArcGIS Explorer detailed download information
(including system requirements and more)
ArcGIS Explorer product information at Esri.com
