Intro to ArcMap Customization with Visual Basic  Create your own toolbars, buttons, interactive tools, and programs  Runs behind the scenes in ArcMap  Supported by extensive web help center  Great addition to GIS skills on a resume

The ArcMap Interface  Powerful but complicated Many tasks require a multitude of steps Capabilities buried within many different toolbars Editing. Enough said.  Unfortunately Many organizations do just a couple of set tasks and they do them often Many personnel / users who might benefit from simple and straightforward GIS use are not trained in ESRI products  Time (training, familiarization) is a limited resource

ArcMap Interface cont.  ArcMap (and more) can be customized to incorporate tools that: Provide shortcuts to common tasks Aggregate multiple steps into one click Simplify the built-in ESRI interfaces and tailor them to the problem at hand

Yet more ArcMap Interface  ESRI provides an extremely comprehensive object library for its GIS components  All components you see here in ArcMap can be accessed behind the scenes

Adding Your Own Commands First Steps  Start with a new toolbar  Add new ‘UIControls’ Buttons Tools Combo Boxes Edit Boxes  Right-click and add code!  Well…not quite that simple

 Right-click toolbar area  Scroll to bottom and click ‘Customize’

 Select ‘New’ toolbar  Enter name  Choose to save inside your mxd file  Your new, empty toolbar appears on the screen

Now add controls  Click the ‘Commands’ tab and scroll to bottom of categories  Click ‘New UIControl’  Select the type of control

Style Controls  Click on the control in the list to give it a new name.  When finished, click and drag the control onto toolbar  Right-click control on toolbar to change label, icon, and specify display options (image only, etc)

Code Window  Also right-click control to specify behavior via code window

 Use the ESRI Developer Network to find code examples

 Many programming languages are supported in ArcGIS  Finding the examples you need for VBA will take some practice

VBA Code for Selecting Features

VBA Code 2  Sets up objects for a layer, the map doc, and the main map  Connects the new objects to your open map document, the first data frame, and the first layer in the list  Sets up query object & specify conditions  Sets up selection set object  Assigns the selection set to the results of the select query

 Example map document and customized toolbar with 3 specialized buttons

 The Zoom to Full Extent button always takes you to the extent of the largest layer  However…

 You can create a button that zooms exactly to a certain spot as a shortcut  Or a button that selects a subset of features of interest without the user having to specify the select by attribute query

Classroom Finder 1  You can tell a button to load a specialized form that takes input, then does processing that you specify in code.

Classroom Finder 2  Restrict input to options in drop-down boxes...

Classroom Finder 3  You can simplify a query, and then condense the query, zooming, and display of the results as you choose  Beginnings of a classrom finder?

Wrap-Up  Familiarization will require some experimentation, but very rewarding  Full libraries, discussion forums, and code examples online at:  Multiple programming languages supported VB, VB.NET, C, C++, Java