ArcGIS Pro 2.x Cookbook: Create, manage, and share geographic maps, data, and analytical models using ArcGIS Pro

To work through this recipe, you will need to make sure you have access to the internet and sufficient permissions to install software on your computer.

A new tab should open in your browser and take you to the Can You RUN It page powered by System Requirements Lab.

Notice that you can see whether your system meets the minimum and recommended specifications for running ArcGIS Pro. If your system just meets the minimum specifications, you can expect ArcGIS Pro to run slowly and require the application to be restarted much more frequently.

If your system failed, you will need to upgrade the components or software that the reports indicate are below the required specifications. This might be as simple as updating your drivers or Internet Explorer. It might require you to purchase new hardware if your CPU, RAM, or video card fail to meet the minimum requirements.

If your system meets or exceeds the system requirements, you may download and install ArcGIS Pro. Please refer to the installation instructions located at http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/get-started/install-and-sign-in-to-arcgis-pro.htm.

ArcGIS Pro has very specific requirements that must be met in order to run effectively. In this recipe, you downloaded and used the tool provided by Esri to verify whether your system met or exceeded those requirements. This tool checks for both hardware and software dependencies needed to successfully run ArcGIS Pro, and provides you with a detailed report so you know without a doubt whether your computer has the horsepower required.

You will need to make sure that you have successfully installed ArcGIS Pro 2.0 or higher. If you have not installed ArcGIS Pro yet, please refer to http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/get-started/install-and-sign-in-to-arcgis-pro.htm for installation instructions.  

At the top of the Licensing window, you will see what license level you have been assigned. As you can see in the image, I have access to the Advanced license level. From here, you can also see which extensions you have access to. Extensions are add-ons for ArcGIS Pro, which provide additional functionality and are normally focused on a specific use, such as 3D analysis or network analysis. Again, in the image, you can see I have access to several extensions:

In this recipe, you learned how to determine which license level of ArcGIS Pro you had access to. You did this by going to the About ArcGIS Pro window from the ArcGIS Pro start window. From there, you accessed your license level information by clicking the Licensing option located on the left side.

The license level is important, as it determines what functionality you have access to within the program. As you will see in this book, some recipes will require you to have access to higher license levels.

The Licensing window allows you to do more than just see what license level and extensions have been assigned to you. It also allows you to determine what type of ArcGIS Pro licensing you want to use, check out a license for use in the field, and more.

ArcGIS Pro supports three basic types of licensing: single user, concurrent user, and named user. Named user is the default and requires you to have a username and password in your organization’s ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Portal. Single user licenses are the traditional software license, where the software is licensed to a single computer. Concurrent licenses are sometimes referred to as network licenses. These make use of a license manager that is typically installed on a server and controls how many users can be running the software at once.  To learn more about the types of licenses supported in ArcGIS Pro, go to http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/get-started/licensing-arcgis-pro.htm.

To complete this recipe, you will need to make sure you have downloaded and installed the data associated with this book. If you followed the installation instructions, the data and projects should be located in C:\Student\ArcGISProCookbook. You will also need access to the internet. You will need to have ArcGIS Pro 2.1 or later installed as well. The recipe can be completed with any license level of ArcGIS Pro: Basic, Standard, or Advanced. 

If you do not see anything below Computer in the panel on the left, click the small arrow head. That will expand the contents of the computer, so you should see the C:\ drive.

If you installed the book data to another drive, select the drive containing the book data.

You have now opened your first ArcGIS Pro project. If it opened successfully, ArcGIS Pro should look similar to this:

Before you can start working in ArcGIS Pro, you must first open a project. To open a project, you must navigate to where it is stored. In this recipe, if you installed the data in the default location, the project was stored on your computer's C:\ drive in a series of folders, so that the full path was C:\Student\ArcGISProCookbook\Chapter1. You were able to access this project by navigating to that location.  

Projects can be saved to your local computer or on a network server. It is also possible to save projects to external and flash drives. You may encounter issues if you do save and try to access projects stored on these devices because of slow data transfer rates.

You are not required to close ArcGIS Pro if you want to open another project. ArcGIS Pro doesn't allow you to open a project if you already have a project open. This will close the current project and open the one you select. To do this, follow these steps.

The project you originally opened should now be closed and a new project should be open, which looks similar to this:

You have now opened two projects in ArcGIS Pro using two different methods. You will find, while using ArcGIS Pro, that there are usually at least two ways to accomplish any tasks. Often there are more.

If you have successfully completed all the previous recipes, you should not need to do anything more to continue with this recipe. If you have not completed the other recipes in this chapter, you will need to do so before starting this one.

You have just opened an existing project map. A project can contain multiple maps that can be either 2D or 3D. 3D maps are referred to as scenes. Now you will learn how to navigate within the maps.

If you look closely at the information window that appears, you will notice it shows the information for the City Limits and not the parcel.  You need to adjust the settings for the Explore tool.

In this recipe, you began exploring the contents of a project by opening an existing map that was contained in a project that you opened in the last recipe. Once you opened the map from that Catalog pane, you began to navigate within it using the Explore tool. You used the Explore tool to first zoom in and out within the map. Then, you used the Full Extent button to return to the full extent of the map view. Next, you used a book mark to zoom to Washington Park in the map. From there, you zoomed into an even more specific area, using a combination of the Explore tool and the Shift key along with your mouse.

Once you zoomed into a block of parcels you were interested in, you used the Explore tool to retrieve information about a specific parcel.

If you have already completed the previous recipes, you should be ready for this one. If you have not completed them, you will need to do so. This recipe builds on the past ones.

As you can see, this is a very simple map. You will want to add some new layers to show additional information.

You have just added three new layers to your map using the Add Data button. This is just one of several methods that you can use to add a new layer to a map. You will use some other methods later in this recipe. Now, you will adjust some of the properties associated with the layers you just added.

Your Layer Properties window should now look like the preceding screenshot. 

Now you will move the Streams and Creeks layer so it is beneath the Lakes and Ponds layer.

Your map should now look like this. The color of the Buildings layer may be different, depending on what ArcGIS Pro assigned it when you added the layer:

It is recommended that you save your projects often. This will help to prevent you from losing work if ArcGIS Pro or your system experiences a problem.

You just created a Map File that will allow you to add this same map to other projects quickly and easily. You will use this file in the next recipe.

In this recipe, you started by adding new layers to a map. You added multiple layers at one time using the Add Data button. Once you added the new layers, you began to adjust their properties so that they would be more useful within the map. First, you renamed the layer using a more descriptive and understandable name than the one originally associated with the feature class in the geodatabase. Then, you updated the metadata for the layer so others using the map would have a better understanding of its purpose.

After you updated some of the basic properties of the layers you added, you worked on the symbology so that the map was easier to read. You made the Streams, Creeks, Lakes, and Ponds layers blue so they resembled the features they represent, also, people are accustomed to seeing them presented this way in a map. You made these adjustments by clicking the symbol patch located beneath each layer and then changing the symbol properties in the Symbology pane.

The Buildings layer required a little more effort, because you needed to change the symbology so that you could tell each building type from within the map. This required you to base the symbology on an attribute of the buildings that was stored in a field found in the attribute table of the Buildings layer. To do this, you went to the Appearance tab and selected the Unique Values symbology. Then, you configured this symbology type to use the Building Type field from the attribute table for the layer. Once you pointed the symbology type to that field, it automatically created a unique symbol for each building type it found. In this case, it created a unique symbol allowing you to determine the type of buildings (for example, houses or apartments). 

You added the Power Poles layer from the Catalog pane by right-clicking the feature class within the geodatabase and selecting Add to Current Map. You then adjusted the color of the Power Poles symbol to red by right-clicking the symbol and selecting Mars Red from the presented color palette.

Finally, you created a Map File based on the map you made, so you will be able add the map to other projects quickly and easily. The map will be added with all the layer properties and settings that you just configured, so you will not need to go through that process again. 

To complete this recipe, all you need to do is ensure that you have ArcGIS Pro installed, access to a license, and the data for the book downloaded and installed. This recipe does not even require you to have completed the previous recipes, though it might help provide a better understanding of what you are doing.  

You have just created your first new project in ArcGIS Pro using the Blank template. This created a new bare bones project. This project contains the minimum number of items you will find in a project. You can now begin to explore your new project.

You should have noticed that your new project contains a single custom toolbox and file geodatabase that has the same name as your project. These were automatically created by ArcGIS Pro when you created the new project. You should have also noticed that several styles and locators were also automatically connected by default.

There are three basic types of geodatabase: personal, file, and SDE. ArcGIS Pro only supports file and SDE geodatabases. It does not support the personal geodatabase. To learn more about geodatabases, go to http://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/data/geodatabases/overview/what-is-a-geodatabase-.htm.

This new project is missing several key elements that you will need to perform any GIS work. First, it is missing a map. Second, if you expand the geodatabase that is connected to the project, you will notice it is empty. So, you also need data.  Now you will connect to an existing geodatabase and then add a map.

You just added a connection to the Trippville GIS geodatabase you have been using in the other recipes. In those, the database connection had already been established. Now you know how it was done. Once you added the connection, you then added it to your favorites and set it so it will automatically be added to any new projects you create.

You still need to add a map. You could do this the same way you did in the previous recipe. However, in this one you will import the Map File you created in the last recipe.

A familiar-looking map should now be added to your project. It contains all the layers that you created in the last recipe along with the symbology and properties you configured.

In this recipe, you created your first new project. You used the Blank template, which creates a very basic project for ArcGIS Pro. Projects created with the Blank template include connections to a custom toolbox and geodatabase that have the same name as the project, along with several styles and locators. The toolbox and geodatabase are automatically created by ArcGIS Pro when you create the new project. They are both empty and are intended for you to save project-specific items to them. However, in most cases, your organization will already have an established GIS database.

Once you created your project, you added a connection to an existing geodatabase, Trippville_GIS. This database contains the GIS data for the City of Trippville that you used in other recipes. This is actually the primary database that you will use in the remainder of this book. So, you added it to your favorites and set it to automatically be added to all new projects you create.  

After you established a connection to the primary geodatabase, you imported a new map. This new map was based on a Map file you created in a previous recipe. The new map was added with layers already added and their properties configured, saving you a lot of effort.

In the last recipe, you created a new project using the Blank template. As you saw, this template automatically created the project structure including a project geodatabase, custom toolbox, and more. The blank template is not the only one included with ArcGIS Pro. There are several others you can use when creating a new project. Let's take a quick look at them.