Chalk up one for ‘reasons to be proud to work in the geospatial industry’.

The Interest

I like license plates.  Always have.   With no encouragement from anyone around me, I naturally gravitated to taking mental inventories of license plates when trapped in the back seat of our family car on those long drives to visit relatives.  My home state, Indiana, had numeric codes representing the county where the vehicle is registered.  There just weren’t many out-of-state plates in my home town but what we lacked in a variety of states, I made up for it by focusing on counties.   All that changed when I went to Bloomington to attend Indiana University where the out-of-state students brought a happy variety of license plates for my viewing pleasure.

And on the topic of variety, Indiana is one of the many states that change the style of license plate frequently.  Some have been winners, others have been horrible failures.  I’ll never forget the plate that touted the state’s half-baked tourist motto: Wander Indiana. Out-of-staters thought that ‘wander’ was the name of a very populous county in Indiana!  You can see why they would think that:

Wander Indiana...Is that near Gary?

And now, in the age of computer designed plates and an infinite palette of available colors, Indiana has opted to go with a straight blue and white fairly generic plate.

BOOOORRRRING!

I don’t mean to rag on my home state but I used to be so jealous of states with cool plates.  Oh to have a Kentucky plate with the smiley face sun…

Smile if you love this plate!

…or Hawaii with the happy rainbow…

Maybe there's a pot of gold waiting for you in Hawaii...

…or New Mexico with their cheerfully simple yellow plate:

Simply enchanting.

When I moved to Arizona I finally claimed a state with a great license plate.  At the time, they were the maroon-colored plates with the white saguaro cactus in the middle:

Clean and classic with a hint of playfulness.

I still love seeing those old plates around!  The newer plates are very nice too, with their colorful twilight sky and saguaros in the distance:

This one captures the beauty of Arizona twilight.

The Idea

It occurred to me that I can combine my interests – license plates and GIS – and create a special map – a mapsterpiece, if you will.  And so it is with great joy that I present to you my license plate map of the US:

Here it is in ArcGIS Online (it takes a moment to load).

My objective was to use recent plates (instead of my favorites) and to try and get the name of the state – if only in part – on the map.  That wasn’t always possible as the smaller states leave little room for options.

The Tools

I created it using ArcMap.  Using a feature class containing the state boundaries and JPEG images of each state’s license plate, I methodically georeferenced each license plate then clipped it to the representative state’s shape. Repeat fifty times and voila!

Do you have a license plate story to share?  Post it here, we’d love to hear it!

A special thank you to David Nicholson at www.15q.net for permission to use the license plate images. It take a geography nerd to recognize a license plate dork when she sees one.

I had been imagining a Recreation geodatabase that I could populate with data I collect in the field with ArcPad. My Sedona hiking geodatabase contains  a few of the feature classes that would work for my new project.  I started by creating the new file geodatabase — called Recreation — in ArcCatalog. Next I brought in the schema of the relevant feature classes from my existing Sedona Hiking geodatabase. They are: Hiking Trails, Trailheads, Sign Posts, and Interesting Sites.

That took care of the essentials, but I wanted a few more feature classes.  I’d have to create them from scratch.  These  include Photo Locations and Social Trails. I made sure that all of my feature classes were GPS-ready and included attribute fields for storing at least one picture, a date field, and a comment field. I include these in all of my operational field layers to facilitate good documentation in my GPS data.  With the main operational  feature classes created,  I could have left it there.  But I had loads of time — at least 8 minutes — and I like to have background data for reference.

A quick look at the Esri Data and Maps revealed ready-to-use roads, federal land use polygons showing park, forest, BLM, and other boundaries, towns and much more. The only problem is the extent of these data is for the entire United States – way too much for my small study area. I opened ArcMap, started a new map, and added a topographic base map from ArcGIS Online. I quickly opened the Catalog window and created a new polygon feature class called Boundary, began an edit session, and drew a rectangle around the general region of Joshua Tree NP. I would use this boundary to clip the background data to my study area.

Next, I opened the ArcToolbox window, located the Clip tool, and right-clicked to run it in batch mode. I clipped all of the background data down to the size of my Boundary feature class in one fell swoop, making use of the environment settings to reproject them to match the other feature classes in my geodatabase. (ArcPad requires that all layers be in the same projection.) Running the Clip tool in batch mode saved me several minutes.

Any geoprocessing tool can be run in batch mode. I clipped several background data layers to the extent of my project all at once.

The newly clipped feature classes were automatically added to my map. I imported the symbology used in the Esri Data and Maps for the same layers which automatically sorted and symbolized my new features. Next, I added my hiking feature classes. Though there were no features to see on the map, I symbolized them for field use selecting bright, easy to see symbols and colors. I turned off attribute fields I don’t need in the field, and turned on labels for a few of my background layers.  I’ve done this many times, so I was careful to make things easy to see and use in the field.

I zipped through the Get Data for ArcPad wizard – choosing to export my background layers as shapefiles and my operational layers into an editable AXF file. Once my folder of data was ready, I copied it over to my mobile device — my trusty Juno SB — then opened the APM in ArcPad and confirmed that everything looked and behaved as it should. My project was ready for the field in 15 minutes.

The next time I want to check out these data, it will take only a minute or two as all of the prep work has been done. The hike to Willow Hole was beautiful and ArcPad performed perfectly. I collected the trail head – with photo — while I waited for my friends to get their packs ready then began the hiking trail polyline while they tied their boots. With streaming mode engaged, I put the Juno in my fanny pack and logged the line while I hiked. There were a few sign posts and interesting sites I logged along the way.

Here's how the hiking trail I logged in ArcPad at Joshua Tree National Park looks in ArcMap.

All in all, this is a great start to what I’m sure will be a great ongoing ArcPad project.

How about you?  How do you prepare your GIS for the field?

I have accepted a position with Esri as the ArcPad Product Manager.  This is a wonderful opportunity for me and it’s one that I am very excited about!  As many of you know, I worked at Esri several years ago as an instructor.  It was a great experience for me then as I boosted my technical GIS skills and found my voice as a trainer and communicator.  I left Esri as my personal and career path brought me back to Arizona where, for the past five years, I worked as an instructor and consultant for GPS, ArcPad, and field data collection.  Now it is time for a new challenge – to take what I’ve learned and the experience I’ve gained back to Esri and be the connecting link between those who use ArcPad and those at Esri who develop and market it.

GeoMattix, LLC, has now completed its cycle.  It has been a great honor working with you over these past two-and-a-half years.  I’ve visited many client sites throughout Arizona to consult and train new and seasoned GIS and GPS users, conducted many online trainings in the southwest, and helped people across the country with my training videos and blog articles.  I have enjoyed running my own business and though it is sad to say goodbye, I am ready for this new challenge.  I know that I will be invigorated by the demands and opportunities of this position and I’m looking forward to working with the amazing folks at Esri in this new capacity.

GeoMattix, LLC, will be shutting its doors September 8^th and I will begin my new job in mid-October.  I’ll still be using the ‘GeoMattix’ name but after September 8^th it will be solely for my personal use and not for business.  I intend to keep my blog though my website will transition from business to personal/professional and I will cease sending email alerts.  You can follow me now and always on Twitter @Geomattix.
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