What's new in editing for ESRI Production Mapping

In ArcGIS 10, major enhancements have been made to editing functionality as well as to the product library within ESRI Production Mapping. With this version, several new tools and enhancements have been made to the editing interfaces within ESRI Production Mapping to improve the ease of use and to better incorporate the changes made to ArcGIS editing such as feature templates. New tools that provide capability to work with linear referencing system data have been introduced that allow you to visualize these events in the form of straight line diagrams.

Feature Manager

The PLTS Target and Selection tabs and PLTS Feature Metadata toolbar have been replaced by Feature Manager, which consists of two dockable windows: Manage Features and Feature Attributes.

Manage Features window

The Manage Features window allows you to access feature templates, which store the attribute information, and the construction tools used to create new features. The Manage Features window has the following tabs:

• The Create tab, which replaces the PLTS Target tab, provides a central location for you to define the types of features you will create. The Create tab has three main components: a toolbar to manage your templates and their properties, a list of templates used to create new features, and a set of tools used to define the features' shape. While similar to the Create Features window, it extends ArcGIS Desktop functionality by adding new types of templates and new construction tools.

  

  New construction tools to create feature geometry are available on the Create tab. The Create and Intersect tool creates a new line feature and splits the feature at the point where it intersects another line. The Difference Polygon tool allows you to ensure that the boundaries between polygons are shared and have coincident edges.

  The Create tab also includes a number of new types of templates:

  • Temporary templates provide the ability to update attributes on the fly before creating a new feature. When a template is selected, its attributes are displayed on the Feature Attributes window and can be updated. These changes are not stored in the template but can be used on the fly.
  • Invalid templates are created when you perform enhanced validation of your templates and there is an error with the attributes stored in the template. This type of validation ensures that the templates have attributes that are set according to your organization's business rules. The validation rules are built using Reviewer checks and stored in the product library.
  • Composite templates are a way of putting together two or more templates and using one edit sketch to create features in all the template layers. Custom construction tools are also provided. A dialog box allows you to choose existing templates and construction tools to create a composite template. You can then create multiple features with one edit sketch.
  • Table templates allow you to add records directly to the table through the Create tab (the same location where new feature attributes are set). It also allows you to validate the attributes of the record using preconfigured validation rules.
  • Event templates for each event layer in the table of contents appear on the Create tab. The Create Event construction tool allows you to select the route where the event will be added to and click to create a point event or click at the beginning and ending points for a line event.
• The Update tab, which replaces the PLTS Selection tab, is comparable to the Attributes window. This tab allows you to select features in the map and view attributes, manage a selection set, update the attributes associated with the features in the selection set, and validate those attribute combinations.

  The Update tab also allows you to commit the selection set directly from the Manage Features window to the Reviewer table if you have started a Reviewer session. The Transfer to Target functionality previously available on the PLTS Target and Selection tabs, which allows you to use existing feature attributes to create new features with the same attribute combination, is now called Use as Template.

  The Update tab provides two ways to view your data—the schema view displays feature classes and subtypes, while the layers view displays each subtype as a layer. Editing many-to-many relationships is also better supported via the Update tab.

  

• The Metadata tab replaces the PLTS Feature Metadata dialog box and toolbar. During editing, metadata favorites are used to specify the values that will be populated in feature-level metadata fields. Feature-level metadata is attributes on the features that store metadata-type information such as when the feature was created or who created it. The Field Configuration Manager can be used to define which fields are feature-level metadata and how these fields will be populated.

  

Create Attributes, Update Attributes, and Metadata Attributes windows

The second dockable window allows you to view the attributes of the template or feature selected on the Manage Features window. The title of this window changes to Create Attributes, Update Attributes, or Metadata Attributes based on the tab that is currently selected on the Manage Features window.

The Create Attributes, Update Attributes, and Metadata Attributes windows honor field configurations that allow you to customize how the attributes are displayed. The window also allows you to validate the attribute combination of features or templates against your enhanced validation rules.

Three types of information will be returned as the result of on-the-fly validation:

• An actual error that must be corrected before committing the change to the feature
• A warning, which you are not required to fix before the changes are committed to the feature
• A processing error, which is returned when the validation checks against the data are not configured properly

Linear referencing systems (LRSs)

A straight line diagram (SLD) is a schematic representation of events along a route. It provides the ability to better visualize events on the route. At 10, you can create an SLD using the Generate Straight Line Diagram tool. The SLD allows you to perform data maintenance of mile logs in the field directly within ArcMap and post them to the database instantaneously. SLDs also allow you to generate mile log map books quickly and efficiently using MPS-Atlas or ArcGIS Data Driven Pages.

Additional linear referencing tools have been included in the current release:

• The Select Route Events tool allows you to select the event without having to manage the selectable layers for the underlying route.
• The Merge Line Events tool allows you to merge two events.
• The LRS Convert Measures To Attributes tool allows you to use the measures that are stored in the geometry of a route to populate attribute values for linear features. These attributes can be used to label the feature and allow you to use the routes in other systems that do not take into account m-values in the geometry.

Product library

• A new Distribute Product Library tool allows you to distribute series and product class information from one product library and import it into another.
• The Field Configuration Manager has been enhanced to allow you to define fields with feature-level metadata. You can now choose the attribute fields that will store metadata information and specify whether the metadata fields need to be automatically populated with the date or user name, as well as the event that will trigger population of this field.
• The product library can be used as a central location to store your validation rules. In previous releases, you could store two types of batch jobs: one that would be validated when you update the attributes of features and one that would be validated against a selection set using the PLTS Spatial Validation tool. At 10, the Associate Batch Jobs tool has been enhanced to allow you to store a new type of batch job that can be validated using the Reviewer Batch Validate tool. You can also specify the severity value of the checks in the batch job, or what will be considered an error. This value is used to determine if checks return errors or messages when validated through Feature Manager.

Geoprocessing

The Distributed Geodatabase toolset in the Production Mapping toolbox provides two tools that allow you to export all or a subset of your data into a new geodatabase.

• The Extract Data geoprocessing tool allows you to select all or a subset of feature classes from a database and create a new database with the schema and data from the selected feature classes. When extracting data, you have the option of choosing a layer with which to clip the data. If features are selected within this layer, only features that fall within the selected feature will be extracted.
• The Create Replica geoprocessing tool allows you to create a replica database. It differs from the Create Replica tool in the Distributed Geodatabase toolbox in that it allows you to specify a layer or selected feature in the layer to limit the features included in the replica.

Other changes in editing

With the current release, most of the functionality available in the PLTS knowledge base, which was used to specify business rules and symbology, is supported by other functionality released with 10. Hence, the knowledge base is no longer supported.

This includes the following:

• Condition Tables (CNTs): These were used to define data validation rules. The CNT table is replaced by Reviewer batch jobs. At 10, you can use the Import CNT command on the Batch Job Manager dialog box to import your data checks into a batch job that can be associated with the product library.
• Valid Value Tables (VVTs): These were used to provide attribute-based rendering of your data. Visual specifications were added at 9.2 and provide similar functionality and also include an interface that allows you to configure your symbology rules and the ability to use representation symbology.
• Field Filter Tables (FFTs): The field filter table has been replaced with the field configuration table in the product library and can be used in conjunction with the Field Configuration Manager to create and update the settings.
• PLTS_Metadata and PLTS_Metadata_Exclusion: These tables were used to define which fields in your feature classes were considered feature-level metadata, which attributes were automatically populated with a date or user name, and when these fields were updated. All this information is now stored as part of the field configuration table in the product library.
• Coverage Mapping: The DBS_FC_VVT table was used to map feature classes to coverages for use with the Production Geodatabase To Coverage tool. If you have defined coverage mapping rules, you can continue to use your DBS_FC_VVT table as is, or see the Creating an ArcInfo coverage using a mapping table topic for information on creating a coverage mapping table.
• Group by Theme: The DBS_FC_VVT table was also used to define groups that the feature class would be added to in the table of contents. Production Views provides similar functionality, allowing you to set the groups in the table of contents and save them to a view. When the view is applied, the layers can be grouped according to the grouping they had when the view was saved. Views allow you to add multiple layers for a feature class and have the layers in different groups, as well as in nested groups.