Tuesday, April 14, 2020

My First-Time Experience with ArcGIS Pro

Haven being a user of ArcGIS/ArcMap desktop software for many years, I recently decided to try out the newest generation of ESRI mapping product the 'ArcGIS Pro'.

Since the software license was beyond my current budget, I made my mind to explore the software by enrolling on one of their free Mass Open Online Classes (MOOC) titled "Spatial Data Science: The New Frontier in Analytics". The software used for the MOOC was 'ArcGIS Pro'!

Here below are my experience lists.


Let get started!

1) It is cloud based and requires Username/password to access the 'ArcGIS Pro' Esri software. When launch the software for the first time, after download and installing it you will have to login or you wont be able to proceed using it.





If your PC is not connected to the internet, the screen below (licensing page) pops-up and you have to select the right license type to login.


In fact, this software will auto close itself if you used for 24 hours without internet connection.


It is always happy when you are connected to its licensing portal and it will continue to work normally!



2) It has built-in support for "Jupyter Notebook".


If you don't like to access the notebook within ArcGIS Pro, you can run the "Jupyter Notebook" server and access your notebook via traditional web browser.




IPython is also available as seen from the system menu. By using either "Jupyter Notebook" or "IPython", you have access to import ArcGIS specific python libraries (that is: 'arcgis' and 'arcpy').




3) Some analysis tools requires some additional credits from your Esri software account

For example the 'Enrich' tool found under: Analysis tab >> Geoprocessing group >> Toolboxes >> Analysis tools >> Statistics. You should see the warning message "This tool consumes credits." See this page to learn more about the ArcGIS credits pricing.



4) The menus icons are grouped under ribbon base menus that can be collapse and expanded as seen below;-

Map Menu


Insert Menu


Analysis Menu



View Menu



Edit Menu



Imagery Menu



Share Menu



5) Elegant dock-able windows



6) Visualize data on different kind of Charts (Bar, Line, Scatter plot, QQ Plot, Histogram, Box Plot, etc)




7) ArcGIS Pro provides various prediction tools
ArcGIS Pro' is more than just a GIS platform, it a powerful platform for "Spatial Data Science"!

Overall experience with 'ArcGIS Pro' was just like the 'Tableau Public' software. "Tableau" is a data scientist's software while "ArcGIS Pro" is a spatial data scientist's software.



Before I close this article, I did like to mention that the course was wonderful and an eye opener to what is new in the spatial data industry.

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, I successfully completed the course and earned a certificate of completion.




Happy working with ArcGIS Pro.

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