You might have seen a post that I did back in July (ArcPad Drawing Speed), which compared the drawing times of different datasets using ArcPad versions 7.1, 8.0 and 10.0. This research backed up the claims made by ESRI that version 10 has significantly improved performance over previous releases.
When creating a shapefile or feature class, you must specify that you want to z enable it. From within ArcGIS, this is simply a matter of selecting the "Coordinates include Z values. Used to store 3D data" option on the first page of the "Create new feature class" dialog.
In ArcPad, when creating a new shapefile, you should select the feature type as "PointZ".
Accessing the height of your points from within ArcPad is also simple. When you create or edit a point, you can switch to the Geography page, which will show the coordinates of the point (including the z height). If you have a line or a polygon layer, it will list all of the coordinates of all of the vertices of that feature.
ArcGIS for Android
Over the coming months it is going to be interesting to watch the uptake of the new Windows Phone 7 OS to see if this again alters the Smartphone market. There are some interesting times ahead.
When working with related tables, you will often need some form of unique value to make up the Primary Key / Foreign Key relationship. This is particularly important in ArcPad, where more than likely, you will have multiple field officers collecting data at the same time.
Perhaps the most convenient way of achieving this is through the use of Global IDs and GUIDs. Both of these data types store registry style strings consisting of 36 characters enclosed in curly brackets: for example, {90A942E1-BC7C-4F1E-94D5-AACAAD24F08C}. What this means is that there are a total of 2128 possible values – which makes the likelihood of repeating a value within your database about as likely as South Africa winning the next World Cup.
What is the difference between the two? ArcGIS actively maintains the Global ID fields (i.e. when a new feature is created, a GUID value will be assigned), whereas the GUID fields are left blank. It is up to the user to maintain these fields.
So to use these in your relationship class, you need to use the Global ID in the Origin Table as the Primary Key, and have a GUID field in the Destination Table as the Foreign Key. This way, ArcGIS and ArcPad will automatically copy the Primary Key Global ID into the Foreign Key GUID field.
To explain this a bit better, let's work through an example. Let's assume that we have a relationship between a feature class 'Weeds' and a related table 'Inspections'. Here, you would:
Some considerations if using this approach:
Remember that you can always set up the relationship using standard field types (numeric, text etc.), which you will need to do if you are not using an SDE database. Some simple coding can provide you with unique values to use in the relationship.
And how is this useful I hear you ask. Well, a couple of ideas are:
For shapefiles, all you need to do is copy a .ico file, with the same base name as the shapefile, into the same directory. So, for example, if your shapefile is Roads.shp, name you .ico file Roads.ico.
The process is a bit more complicated with AXF files. You need to open up the axf in Application Builder, right click the layer and select "Set Layer Icon". You can clear the icon by selecting "Clear Layer Icon".
A good selection of sample icons can be found in C:\Program Files\ArcPad 7.1\Samples\Layer Icons. If you want to make your own, a good program is IcoFX. Your icons need to be 4bit 16x16 images.
