ArcGIS for AutoCAD 2007

If your organization uses AutoCAD and you would like to view some of the ArcGIS Server map services that your GIS folks have cooked up without leaving AutoCAD you can download the new ArcGIS for AutoCAD tool from ESRI. This tool “is a free application that installs on top of AutoCAD 2007 and provide access to the results of all the GIS and mapping geoprocessing capabilities performed by ArcGIS in the form of map service images.”
The application allows users to:

• Dynamically interact with live GIS maps, including GIS symbology and data structures.
• Include the results of GIS analysis and models (performed by ArcGIS) in their CAD designs.
• Include GIS basemaps in their CAD products.

This all sounds really cool if your shop uses both products. Give it a download and drop us a note to let use know how this is working.

I’m tempted to put up a few ArcGIS Server apps myself just to test this out.

Looking for NYS Data? Check CUGIR

My organization has quite a lot of data hosted on the Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR) site. “CUGIR is an active online repository in the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse program. CUGIR provides geospatial data and metadata for New York State, with special emphasis on those natural features relevant to agriculture, ecology, natural resources, and human-environment interactions.” Anyway, the site has been re-designed since mid-last year and provides an easy way to find and download data and metadata. If your organization has data to contribute you may contact them directly. As a GIS user I encourage you to check out the site and poke around for a while. Download some of the data and give it a try. If you have any questions concerning the Tompkins County related data-sets just drop me a line via this blog.
-Catt

ArcGIS Server First Experience

My first hands on Experience with ArcGIS Server was at the NEARC Conference where we had a little hands on training excercise. It was pretty basic, we simply authored a map in ArcMap and used ArcCatalog to setup a connection to our webserver then published the map to the web. It was pretty straighforward and I felt right at home having used a frontend to publish maps to the web the past two years. I felt that in some ways that ArcGIS Server provided a nice frontend to publish your maps to the web and that the maps were also quite fast once they were up.  I was also quite excited about all the tools especially the editing tools that one could add provided you had the right license. My first impression after my hands on have been positive and now my hand has been itching to install the software and have a bit of fun.  Anyway, Dealy Geomatics has written up a “Hands-on” post about their introduction to ArcGIS Server . Check it out. I think some great points were made there. For a second pass ArcGIS server is much improved and I’m hoping that it will get even better as time goes on.

Where’s the Google Earth Guy?

I like Google Earth and most things Google so I was sad to hear that Jim Gray the Microsoft Researcher who helped develop the technology behind Google Earth has been missing since Sunday. He apparently went off in his boat to Farallon Islands to scatter his mother’s ashes (she passed sometime last year) and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. A search and rescue operations is underway according to the press but so far he hasn’t turned up. Sounds suspicious to me what do you all think happened?

Welcome to SYNERGIS!

Welcome to SYNERGIS.  We’re a group of GIS Professionals, Managers and Students from Tompkins County and the surrounding area. We hold brown bag lunch meetings (no-cost) once every other month to discuss and share local innovative uses of GIS. Please join us to share your GIS knowledge and ideas and learn what other locals are doing in the ever-changing world of Geographic Information Systems. Please join us at our upcoming meeting on Valentines Day February 14th, 2007 from 12:00 to 1:30 PM at Cornell Institute for Resource Information Sciences 300 Rice Hall.  See map. You can sign up for more information about upcoming meetings at our yahoo group.