And, let’s face it, this is what attracted (and still attracts) me to librarianship. Every day I manage data/information, research data/information, help and educate others to do the same, but am rarely forced to interpret or compile the data into any hard and fast thesis (aka write a paper) and rarely am faced with a project deadline similar to the private sector. Sure I have to give a little in terms of a smaller salary (slightly…or perhaps not), but it is so worth it.
Why am I writing about this now? Well, I just spent some great AM hours tackling a problem, solving the problem, and now (best of all) I get to hand it off to the actual researcher who will do the actual work. Here is the story:
Geosciences professor is having trouble calculating the azimuth between a series of points in a feature class. After I imagine some headaches trying to figure this out, the professor asks me if I have done this before. Well no, I say, but surely there must be something built into ArcGIS that can handle this, right? If there is, the professor says, I sure could not find it. All right-y then…
So, with a definitive task in mind, I grab myself a nice tall cup of water, sit down at the computer, and pleasantly begin the search.
Easy to use button?
- Nope.
Not even a geoprocessing tool?
- No.
Shoot on over to ArcScripts but no script in sight.
- OK then.
Pull up to the ESRI Forums.
- Wow, there is something here. Others have had this problem before.
- Found a thread: Measuring azimuth between 2 points.
- This is good.
- The poster, one H Gonzago, posted an ArcObjects sub-procedure. The post states that he got it (copy & paste) from the ArcObjects Developer Help.
- OK, so I quickly create a button in ArcMap, call the sub-procedure on the onClick event, and presto it works like a charm.
- A for/next loop will be necessary to process all the points, and I sent this to the professor. Of course I even offered to write the loop for the professor.
Now this was a couple of well spent AM hours that has given me much satisfaction.
1 comment:
Excellent! The sweet taste of success after a long hard labour....Totally worht it!
Good job Josh.
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