ArcPad Tips & Tricks #4: Optimising Streetmap Extension

We have had a few enquiries from customers using the Streetmap Extension with ArcPad 8. On some PDA's, they are unable to add the streetmap data to a map that already has layers in it. If the map is empty, then there are no issues. To confuse things further, it all loaded fine on the desktop version of ArcPad.

After a bit of investigation, it turned out that the cause of the problem was memory constraints. The only way that we could get the data to load was to turn off all extensions that were not being used. Once we had ArcPad down to the bare bones state, the data loaded up fine, and the extension could be used.

So, to turn the extensions off:

1. From the Options menu, select Utilities à Advanced Settings
   
2. Switch to the Extensions menu
   
3. Uncheck all extensions that you are not using. By default, a lot of these will be already turned off. There should be some (such as the graphics layer and photo layer) that you can also turn off.
   
4. Restart ArcPad (this is important, as the changed settings are not applied until you restart).
   

If you are still having problems, then you may need to clip a subset of the streetmap data to restrict the amount of data in the map.