I must admit being a non-ArcGIS user all the different ArcGIS editions had led to me suffering from what James calls ArcConfusion. After attending the introductory course to ArcGIS, I now have a better idea what ArcView, ArcEditor and err..ArcMap do. I still find it weird that none of the programs installed on my machine are actually named ArcGIS.
Now that I realize I’m using the basic version – ArcView – with 3D Analyst – I’m finding it surprising that what I think are basic features missing in ArcView: multiple layouts, internal Google/VE image servers, linking to non-ESRI geometry fields, changing column format, advanced spatial and non spatial SQL, etc.
What came over from the instructor time and again was not to store all your eggs in a single mxd, which to someone who has a Manifold project that has over 25 layouts in a single Map file came as something of a surprise. What was it that made the instructor not comfortable in doing this? The current discussion of reliability of ArcGIS in another thread at Spatially Adjusted may highlight why the instructor lacked faith in storing too much in a single mxd – he just wasn’t confident that these regular crashes would not corrupt his mxd.
Now I’m not saying in my use of Manifold I’ve never suffered reliability issues, I remember one particular release causing constant crashes, but apart from that release Manifold has been rock solid and I can honestly say that it is the most reliable piece of software I have ever used.
It’s my intention to start and complete a decent GIS project in ArcGIS, a project that has some advanced GIS functionality requirements and see how far I get through it without jumping back to Manifold, I’ll report my progress here as I work through it.
Well?!? We haven’t seen anything from this in a month – still trying to figure out ArcGIS?
Well…funny you should ask, because today was the first day since my training that I’ve use ArcCatalogue and ArcMap for project work.
I needed to apply FGDC metadata to a bunch of SHP files I had exported from a MDB I had been using to store geometry (using Manifold to build the geometry). The metadata input was easy enough, but as I was browsing other SHP files, a fairly large library of data, I kept getting crashes – should I expect this as normal behaviour?
I’ll try and post more on this in the near future.