The history of ArcGIS

The history of ArcGIS

Esri, Environmental Systems Research Institute, knew there was a starving market for location-based systems also known geographic information systems (GIS). In 1990s, Esri started working on a product that later became one of the best enterprise solutions for GIS implementations on Windows systems. In 1999, ArcGIS was released. Since then, ArcGIS hasbecome the most used commercial GIS solution. ArcGIS was then renamed ArcGIS for Desktop, and the ArcGIS name was used as a product line instead to carry lots of products under it.

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When the Web started to become ubiquitous in early 2000s, Esri adopted the Web by rolling in ArcGIS for Server and gradually ArcGIS functionalities as web services so that it could be supported on multiple platforms including mobile phones.

A decade later when the cloud solutions began to surface, Esri released its Software as a Service (SaaS) solution ArcGIS Online. Designed to simplify the user experience, ArcGIS Online hides all the ArcGIS "contraptions" and technologies to relieve the user from maintaining the hardware and software, leaving the user to do what they do best, mapping. Having everything in the cloud allows users to focus on their work instead of worrying about configurations, spinning up servers and databases, and running optimization checks.

Note

SaaS, a cloud-based software distribution model where all infrastructure, hardware, management software, and applications are hosted in the cloud. Users consume the applications as services without the need to have high-end terminal machines.

Today, Esri is pushing to enhance and enrich the user experience and support multiple platforms by using the ArcGIS Online technology.

In this book, we target one of the core products of the ArcGIS family—ArcGIS for Desktop. By using real-life examples, we will demonstrate the power and flexibility of this 16+ year-old product ArcGIS for Desktop. We are going to use the various tools at our disposable to show how we can extend the functionality of ArcGIS for Desktop.

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*Step-by-step work through on earth volume computation using sufer*

*Step-by-step work through on earth volume computation using sufer*
The procedure assumes you already have sufer installed on your PC
👉Launch the sufer application by double clicking its icon on your desktop
👉On the program main menu, click Grid
👉Click data... in the drop down sub-menu
👉Navigate and locate the raw file containing your x,y,z data defining the surface in question
👉Click Open
An interface showing some sample of your data is displayed on the screen
👉Ensure that the appropriate field delimeter is selected and click OK
👉On the Grid Data interface that comes up next, select the appropriate field (i.e column) for each of your x, y, z data as contained in the previous interface
👉Select any desired griding method on the space provided for such on the Grid Data interface. The common and default method is kriging
*Note* : the result you obtain depends pretty much on the grid method you select as each of the methods uses different models in predicting the Grid elevation of the unobserved points
👉Click OK
The griding is then carried out by the application and the report displayed on the screen that can be saved to a file
*Note:* These procedures applies for each of the surfaces in the case of two surfaces volume computation. For a single surface, you just do that once for the available surface file

Next is to compute volume using the grid file created
👉On the program main Menu, click Grid
👉Click Volume in the drop down menu
👉Browse and locate the grid file created
👉Click to open the file
👉The Grid Volume interface pops up where you are expected to define your surfaces
👉The upper surface is natural ground surface (Topo-surface) for which a grid file has been created
👉The Lower surface is the grade or design surface
👉 For each of the surfaces, you can either chose to load a grid file or use a constant value
👉For a single surface volume with only the natural ground grid surface elevations, click and upload the grid file for the upper surface and define a constant, z value for the lower surface   (graded surface)
👉 Leave the Z- factor as 1
👉Click OK
The cut and fill volumes are displayed with the associated areas obtained

*Note*: the results earth volumes may vary from one application to another even with the same data depending on the method for computing areas and of course the griding method

FUSING IN CAD CAPABILITIES INTO GIS. BY HONEST S. O. U.

FUSING IN CAD CAPABILITIES INTO GIS.       BY HONEST S. O. U.              

ArcGIS as a GIS software lacks some cartographic capabilities for drafting of work. We are often left with converting/ exporting our GIS work into a CAD environment and after some modifications in CAD environment, the work is exported back to ArcGIS environment. GIS lacks some conventional cartographic signs and symbols and does not allow free sketching of such signs/ symbols, a times we make do with Adobe Illustrator and other softwares to aid us.        The question therefore is,  how can we fuse in CAD capabilities into GIS environment?  I found out a simple method of doing this. You can convert your shape file to CAD file. Without closing the ArcGIs, open the CAD file and do the necessary modifications on the CAD  work. Use layer plotting for all text files, signs and symbols so that they can come out as layers in ArcGIS. After all the modifications both the layout and adjustments in the digitized features (Point, Line and Polygon) .Save your CAD work and open your ArcGIS file which u minimized and you will find all the modifications on your ArcGIS.                      Cheers.

STEPS FOR CONVERTING YOUR ArcGIS SHAPE FILE TO CAD.                                    1.Goto ArcToolbox.                     
2.Select Conversion Tools.                                     3.Select to CAD. Select ,Export to CAD.           Under Input Features, (select the shape files you want to convert). Under Output Type( select the DWG- the AutoCAD version u want to save it),  Under output file(Select the folder you want to save it).                                           4. Select Ok and wait for the files to convert/export to CAD. When its successful, it pops out successful message on the ArcGIS environment