Diving into your questions about ArcGIS Pro 3.0 – Part 2

September 15, 2022

Maggie Samson

Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the questions you asked about ArcGIS Pro 3.0. In this second Q&A, we are covering questions about Analysis, Geoprocessing and Data Management.

Welcome to the second part of the Esri Canada Summer School Dive into ArcGIS Pro 3.0 Webinar Q&A. In this section of the Q&A we are plunging into your questions relating to Analysis and Geoprocessing as well as Data Management. If you were looking for questions answered about setup or collaboration, check out Part 1. Just a reminder you can also access the webinar recording to review what we discussed.

Analysis and Geoprocessing

As we flowed into the new functionality portion of the presentation and started showing off the new and improved tools, a fresh wave of questions began rolling in. This was no surprise to us as some exciting enhancements are coming with ArcGIS Pro 3.0.

Q: For the hydrology analysis tools, is this a lightweight version of ArcHydro? Does 3.0 have an ArcHydro install?

Both Arc Hydro and the Hydrology toolset in ArcGIS Pro allow you to perform hydro analysis modelling water flow across a surface. However, they are very different in terms of scale.

The Hydrology toolset is a collection of 16 geoprocessing tools. These tools allow you to pre-process your data for analysis by performing workflows and determining flow information, such as flow direction and accumulation. The new tools added in ArcGIS Pro 3.0; Derive Continuous flow, Derive Stream as Line and Derive Stream As Raster, provide additional functionality that helps to eliminate some of the pre-processing steps needed to create a hydrologically conditioned DEM.

While many of the core functions of the ArcGIS Pro Hydrology Tools are used in Arc Hydro, they are far from what is included in that extension. ArcHydro provides a GIS framework for developing integrated analytical systems for the water resources market. It is geared towards analysis and provides data models, workflows, and over 300 tools to perform your analysis. It is much more involved than a set of tools, so the Hydrology toolset in ArcGIS Pro 3.0 is not equivalent to a lightweight version of Arc Hydro, lacking key components of that product.

While they are appropriate for performing Hydro Analysis and can help to achieve some of the same results as ArcHydro, they may not be enough for dedicated water resource organizations.

If you are working with Arc Hydro in your ArcGIS Pro workflows, the installation for ArcGIS Pro 3.0 is now available for download.

Q: What’s the best reference tutorial for experiencing/leveraging GWR/MGWR?

A: Esri Inc has released a blog post that discusses the Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) tool and compares it to the existing regression tools. As a part of this blog, you can download the project package they have used and follow along to see the tool in action yourself. If you have ArcGIS Pro installed I recommend you follow through with their workflow as is outline in Discovering spatial relationships with Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression.

We have also released a YouTube video on our Esri Canada YouTube channel shown below that gives you a deeper dive into the MGWR demo shown in the presentation. In this video there is also a comparison shown between the GWR and MGWR results.

Q: Does the spatial join only work if it is one-to-one?

A: Spatial joins performed using the Spatial Join tool from the Analysis Toolbox can be one-to-one or one-to-many. Spatial joins performed with the Add Spatial Join tool from the Data Management Toolbox can only be one-to-one. The difference between these two tools is that Spatial Join (Analysis) creates a new feature layer and Add Spatial Join (Data Management) creates a temporary join with no new features added to the project.

Q: Does a temporary spatial join need to be re-run if the project is closed and re-opened?

A: No, as with the Add Join (Data Management) tool joins created using the Add Spatial Join (Data Management) will be maintained in the project after it is closed. The join would only need to be re-run if it is removed from the layer.

Q: Do temporary spatial joins lock your data?

A: Any lock placed on the data while using ArcGIS Pro, including using the data to create a temporary spatial join, is only locked while the data is used in the project.

A screen capture of the Windows File Explorer showing file locks on the data that is currently participating in a join and open in ArcGIS Pro.

When ArcGIS Pro is open, all of the data being accessed by the project have lock files applied.

If the project is closed, the lock on the data is released. While the project is opened, all the layers added to the map will have a lock file on whether they participate in a join or not.

A screen capture of the Windows File Explorer showing there are no file locks on the data that is currently participating in a join when ArcGIS Pro is closed.

When ArcGIS Pro is closed, the locks on the data are released.

Q: What happens with a Spatial Join when the inputs change?

A: Unlike attribute joins, spatial joins are not dynamic and do not change when you edit the values in the input features. To update the join, you will need to remove and re-add it to your layers. For more information on joins in ArcGIS Pro please see Introduction to joins and relates.

Data Management

The heart of any ArcGIS Pro project is the data, and ArcGIS Pro 3.0 is no different. So, to finish off the webinar, we saw some data management questions making their way in.

Q: After upgrading to ArcGIS Pro 3.0, we found that a handful of our projects will not open; they are stuck on the loading layout/map screen.

A: This can happen if your project contains Microsoft Excel files. To use Microsoft's proprietary file format in ArcGIS Pro 3.0, you must install the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable 64-bit driver. If you already have the 32-bit version of this driver installed on your machine, you will need to perform a silent install; this is done by running the executable along with the /quiet command. When the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable 32-bit driver is installed, you will also need to have the 32-bit .NET 6 Desktop Runtime - Windows x86 installed.

We have created a YouTube video addressing this behaviour and reviewing how to install the required files that you can review below:

Q: Does the enhancement on aliasing folder name changes also apply to changing database connections?

A: No, the option to apply an alias is only for folder names and does not apply to a database connection. Suppose this is a functionality that you would like to see added to future software releases. In that case, I recommend you share your suggestion on the ArcGIS Pro Ideas page on the Esri Community site. With the 50+ enhancements added to ArcGIS Pro 3.0 coming from your user ideas, we can see the development team regularly taking your suggestions on improving workflows in ArcGIS Pro.

Two screen captures showing the available options for different catalog connections. The image on the left (Figure A) shows folder connection have the option to apply and alias, the option on the right (Figure B) shows that geodatabases do not have the option to apply an alias.

A. Folders added to the Catalog Pane have the option to apply an alias, whereas B. Geodatabase connections added to the Catalog Pane do not have the option to apply an alias.

Q: Does the credit estimation message work with more than just the geocoding tools?

A: Many of the credit-consuming tools in ArcGIS Pro now include the option to perform a credit estimation before running the process. These tools include the following:

These are not the only geoprocessing tools that use credits in ArcGIS Pro 3.0, so we recommend that you review the documentation to confirm the number of credits utilized when using credit-consuming workflows.

Q: What is the difference between Export Features (Conversion) added in ArcGIS Pro 3.0 and the previous Feature Class to Feature Class (Conversion) tool for exporting your data?

A: Both Export Features (Conversion) and Feature Class to Feature Class (Conversion) will allow you to export a copy or subset of your data from one feature to a new feature class in a geodatabase. The difference between the workflows is that the new Export Features tool has two additional parameters: Use Field Alias as Name and Sort Field. As is evident by the parameter's name, you can now set the field aliases that appear in the original feature as the field names in the output feature. The Sort Field parameter allows you to reorder the input records, and the direction the records will be sorted. This new tool gives you more control over how your data appears and is stored in your features.

Honourable mentions:

While not strictly related to ArcGIS Pro 3.0, we wanted to include this question because it is essential for you to know.

Q: When is ArcMap is going to be deprecated?

A: ArcGIS 10.8.2 is the current release of ArcMap and will continue to be supported until March 01, 2026, as established in the ArcGIS Desktop Product Life Cycle. 2026 will be here sooner than you think so now is the time to start making the move over to ArcGIS Pro and this is the perfect place for you to be to begin that transition. If you are just dipping your toes into the large waters that are ArcGIS Pro here are some resources, we recommend getting you started:

After returning to shore, we concluded the webinar by sharing some of the blog posts containing more details on both the new functionality and the compatibility implications for ArcGIS Pro 3.0 that take you deeper into the topics we covered. You saw these same blogs in Part 1 but we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out on our favourites: