N. DataLink for ArcGIS

Owned by Erlend Kvinnesland
Last updated: Aug 18, 2015 by Anders Moe
2 min read

Introduction

The Datalink for ArcGIS plugin provides interoperability between Geocap and the ArcGIS suite of products from Esri. The DataLink allows you to open existing ArcMap Documents (.mxd) in Geocap and lets you display the data directly in the graphics window of Geocap.

It is also possible to open Esri File Geodatabases inside a Geocap project allowing you to copy data between the Geocap project and the geodatabase.

 

The Datalink for ArcGIS is only available in the 32bit version of Geocap. You will also need an existing ArcGIS 10.x desktop license to be available on your machine.

Exercises

ArcMap documents in Geocap

Exercise

Load an ArcGIS map document the Geocap project

  1. Open the Atlantis project
  2. In the project toolbar click the Add Data Source toolbutton
  3. Click Add Data Source
  4. On the connection dialog type inn a name that describes the map file. This is optional.
  5. In the Datasource field choose ArcMap Document
  6. Click the Browse button to select the Atlantis.mxd map file
  7. Click Connect
  8. A map node will be created in the project. This is a link to the existing mxd file. No data is copied.
Exercise

Visualize map data in the Geocap project

  1. Select a layer that is not a group layer.
  2. Right click on the layer node 
  3. If the layer is a feature layer use  Display Features
  4. If the layer is a raster layer use LOD Grid Display. Open the command in edit mode an check Flip Z values.

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File Geodatabases

 

Exercise

Create a new file geodatabase in the project

  1. Create a new project or open an existing one
  2. In the project toolbar click the Add Data Source toolbutton
  3. Click Create ArcGIS File Geodatabase
  4. The database creation dialog pops up. There are two alternatives for the location of the new geodatabase:
    1. If you create the database inside the project directory the geodatabase and relative path names will continue to work even if you change the location of the Geocap project.
    2. If you create the database outside the project it can more easily be shared by several projects or other applications, but the database can no longer be accessed by the project if the project is moved..
  5. Choose the database location and name and click OK
  6. The geodatabase is create on disk and a new database object is created in the project.
Exercise

Copy data from Geocap to the geodatabase

  1. Right-click the dataset that you wish to move to the file geodatabase and select Copy
  2. Right click the geodatabase object and click Paste.
  3. A dialog will pop up showing you various options for tranforming the VTK data to a corresponding ESRI data format. Which conversion dialog is shown depends on whether the VTK data format is a raster dataset or polydata. If the source dataset is VTK Polydata the dataset will be split into two feature classes, one for points and for the the cell geometry. You may choose one or both. In most cases you will also choose to flip the Z values, which is default.
  4. Geocap will try to determine the ESRI spatial reference that corresponds to the one in the source dataset. If you think the chosen suggested spatial reference is wrong you may browse and select one of the standard ESRI spatial references.
  5. Click  OK to perform the conversion and close the dialog 
  6. The result data will be found in the project  under the geodatabase connection.