GeoPDF formatted data represents a large and growing source of information. The US Geological Survey is creating all new US Topo products in GeoPDF format and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is releasing scanned map products in GeoPDF format.

It would be a great help if ArcMap would be able to display these GeoPDF products ... at least as a background map ... if not exploit their content further. 

Moving multiple categories (up and down) at a time,
 
I’m not sure if there is a chance to be able to move MULTIPLE categories (up and down) at a time
 
 
Thank you
 
Best
 
Jamal

I would like to see the abillity to change the field names of a shapefile/ feature class.

Automatically removing categories of zero count,
 
I used to build a lyr file that contains all possible classes. It happens very often that when this *.lyr file is applied to particular layers (that have similar contents) then some of the classes have zero count.
 
 
Is there a chance to be able to automatically remove classes of zero count (such that they don’t appear on the legend)?
 
Also, sounds not to have the option to sort based on the count!
 
 
Thank you
 
Best
 
Jamal

Sometimes a path change, or a server change renders a collection of MXD files to have broken links to the Data Sources. Depending upon various conditions it can take quite a while for the map to load. (And there are several ways to repair them, fortunately, although there is room for improvement here too... but that's another topic.)

It would sure be nice to be able to, for instance hold down a Shift key, in order to bypass the Data Source check process as a map document loads.

This has long been available in the Windows OS (hold down shift key, as the dvd loads) to bypass the Auto Play feature of loading a DVD or CD. Why not add this Windows shortcut to the ArcMap product too? This could be a real timesaver if all you need is to check where a data source is trying to load from, or if certain data sources are temporarily unavailable.

I don't need it all that often, but often enough and with enough layers that it would be a very nice bonus and probably pretty easy to incorporate.

Cheers, Bill~

Allow users to move fields up/down during creation of new Feature Class or Table

Please add the ability for the constant "are you there?" connection test of ArcGIS Desktop to ArcGIS Online to be on demand or when needed in addition to the current always or never.

Background

With 10.1 ArcGIS Desktop introduced ArcGISConnection.exe which checks for a connection to ArcGIS Online every 5 to 60 seconds. The minimum test time is user configurable but cannot be extended past the upper 60s limit.

After vocal complaints in the forums, technical support cases, and elsewhere at Service Pack 1 users were granted the abiltity to:

• Disable the connection altogether or
• Point the connection to a different ArcGIS Portal (e.g. your own ArcGIS Server, for those organizations large or flush enough to have one).

It is good that these options are available, I'm glad they're there, but the solution is too crude. The cost of disabling the always on connection is that then users cannot use any of the ArcGIS Online services, e.g. basemaps. I'm proposing that a 3rd option of "when needed" be added.

I envision this when needed option working like:

• The default test-connection state is off, ArcGISConnection.exe is not running.
• In Arcmap when user uses "Add Data >> Basemap" or "Connect to ArcGIS Online" ArcGISConnection.exe is fired up and thereafter continues as is current practice, for the duration of the ArcMap/Catalog session.
• When ArcMap/Catalog is closed, ArcGISConnection is also closed.
• Any .mxd or .lyr files making use ArcGIS Online resources trigger ArcGISConnection to ON state.

Please put fine grained control of the ArcGISConnection manager into the hands of users and system administrators. The current all or nothing approach is insufficient to meet the needs for many of your clients.

Thank you.

The Layer object in the ArcPy Mapping module should have a Collapse parameter.  This would control how the layer symbology is displayed in the Table of Contents.  This would be a True/False value. 

• True = layer in the Table of Contents displays the symbology and the minus box to minimze the symbology.
• False = layer in the Table of Contents has the plus symbol to expand the symbology.

By adding the ability to store layer files within a geodatabase, I could have one geodatabase with the data stored in completely following best practice and another that only had layer files with the data filtered, symbolized etc but users still being able to be provided with a geodatabase look and feel.

1. A couple versions ago we were given the ability to import and work with MS Excel files.  I've always needed to be able to EXPORT a table directly TO an Excel (.xls) file, without have to find a 3rd party app to do it.  (Still not in version 10's Table Options>Export command>Save as type options dropdown.)  Currently, we can export to a text (.txt/.dbf) file then import it to Excel; too many steps.  ESRI can this functionality be added soon???

2. And why is "File Geodatabase" in the dropdown list twice?

3. Also, the export should default to the previous "Save as type" last selected?  Not to the never used .dbf file type!!!

The search services in 10.0 and 10.1 are pretty much useless for an enterprise installation. We have a published Oracle ArcSDE geodatabase with about a thousand layers in it and several hundred users. We would like to be able to use search services to allow users to find data more easily.

The problem is with the way search services are designed. To have the service search and index an SDE data source you have to supply it with an SDE connection file with a saved username and password. Every user that uses this 'enterprise' search service will end up connecting as the same userid, the same one that created the search index. This is a problem for us. If all users are connecting as the same userid then we have no ability to determine who is locking a dataset or who is running a query that is sucking up all the memory in the database.

The search service should not store the username and password in the *.sde.dsc index files that it creates. These should have an anonymous connection. Without this ability the "enterprise search" is useless and users will have to create their own local search services against the database which is totally contrary to the point of a search service.

Thanks, Al Benvin (City of Calgary)

It is nice that ESRI has added bug searching to the resource center. An enhancement I would like to see with this, is the ability to add a bug to my Support Account, for two reasons. Bugs could be somewhat prioritized based on the number of people who have added them to a support account, and would allow me to more easily track the status of bugs that relate to me. I don't always want to take the time to contact ESRI about a bug, particularly if I have already found that it is an issue through the resource center.

A lot of customers asked me is there will ever be a Recycle Bin for ArcCatalog, since they accidentally deleted data they needed.
I myself would also love an instrument/utility which can recover data after deleting it (feature classes, tables) from the geodatabase with ArcCatalog (and not only data from the geodatabase, shapepfiles, rasters, geodatabases).

Andreea Gutu
ESRI Romania

It is common practice for custom arcmap extensions to persist information in the mxd via IPersistVariant.

While IMapDocument provides a way to open up an mxd and retrieve maps and layers, it does not provide a way to access persisted extension data.  I think this could be done by adding an interface to the MapDocument class that has interfaces to:

• enumerate extensions in the document
• load an extension, hydrating it with the persisted data
• save/update a hydrated extension to the mxd
• remove a persisted extension from the mxd

I would like to load and save data to an mxd for a particular extension using only an ArcEngine license.

This would make it easier to migrate ArcMap extensions to ArcGIS server SOE's.  When an mxd is published as a mapservice, the mxd is embedded within the service definition, and can be opened by an SOE using MapDocument, found relative to IMapServerInit.Filepath. The SOE could then use the same data used by the Arcmap extension. 

There are persistent reports of many people having major performance issues with ArcGIS 10 desktop on hardware configurations that meet and beat the recommended specifications, some of them by a fair margin. Please fix quickly. We want to take advantage of the new features but the serious slow down in basic activities like editing means we are paying a serious tax in terms of our time.

Please see http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/8386-Desktop-ArcGIS-10-Really-Slow for more info.

thank you.

Right now, we can symbolize topology errors by rule.  For instance, I can symbolize "Boundary Must Be Covered By Boundary Of (Area-Area)" differently than "Must Not Have Gaps (Area)".

What I cannot do, however, is symbolize the same rule based on the features participating in the rule.  For example, if I have "Boundary Must Be Covered By Boundary Of (Zoning-Parcels)" and "Boundary Must Be Covered By Boundary Of (School Districts-Parcels)"  I'm stuck with one symbol for both error types. 

I realize that I could just have two different topologies, but that requires two different feature datasets.  I strongly prefer 1 feature dataset- because my topology rules require parcels, which are maintained by a different office.  I have to copy parcels from that office's feature dataset into my feature dataset.  So, the fewer feature datasets the better.

Please allow us to create datasets inside other datasets.  All levels of datasets should have the same spatial properties as the top level dataset.  Doing this should allow us to create spatial relationships such as topology and networks across child datasets as long as the topology sits in a common parent dataset.  It would act more like a folder structure than the current dataset model.

Right now I have many feature classes (30+) that need to interact with each other.  However this means that I must put them in the same dataset.  It makes the dataset very large and unorganized.  By having child datasets I can put the relationship classes at higher level dataset and have my feature classes in more of subject based child datasets.

Allow to paste closed lines into a polygon layer the same way as polygons into a line layer.