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Geography 176B
Lab FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
ArcInfo Lab FAQs
by Nick Matzke, Sarah Battersby, and TAs
This page is basically a compilation of problems and solutions/work-around that have been accumulated by Nick & Sarah in the course of their work with ArcInfo 8.0.2 (& the 8.1 beta). The course TAs may decide to add things as well if (when) they discover new bugs or pitfalls in the 8.1 software release. Perhaps, if students find problems and solutions and send them in an email to their TA, they can be pasted into this page as well.
At the moment they are listed in no particular order. If the list gets long enough, I would recommend using Netscape's Find command (Edit --> Find in Page, or CTRL+F) to conduct a text search.
I coul not get this to work; either the tool wouldn't open or I'd get multiple error messages on a simple operation. Exporting the Shapefile to a geodatabase, then exporting the geodatabase Feature class to a polygon coverage appears to work.
Try right-clicking on the folder you think the file should be in, and click Refresh.
Sarah says:
Write locks -
If you receive an error message that there is a "write lock" on data, this
means that the dataset that you wish to use is currently in use in another
ArcInfo operation. This could mean that it is open in the preview
windown in ArcCatalog, displayed in ArcMap (even if it isn't drawn, it
is still "in use"), or being used in ArcToolbox processing.
To remove the write lock, the secondary use needs to be ended - that is, close down the ArcMap file, wait for the ArcToolbox processing to end, change to the contents tab in ArcCatalog, or otherwise stop using the data. Sometimes, if the write lock is still not lifted, ArcInfo will need to be re-started.
Nick adds:
This error may
have something to do with Folder Permissions in some cases.
If closing the offending app. doesn't seem to fix your problem, try looking
at the Folder Properties by
right-clicking on the folder
in ArcCatalog. If you see something like this:
...then uncheck the "Read-only" box and click OK. If this doesn't work, make sure that all of the folders involved in the operation (e.g., c:\temp, c:\temp\lab2, and c:\temp\lab2\sb_elev) are writable. If this still doesn't work, check the File Properties for write-permission issues for the files involved in the operation (you will have to use Windows Explorer or My Computer & right-click on the file to do this; file properties in ArcCatalog give you geographic display properties -- and as you will see below, changing properties in Windows Explorer may not change them in ArcInfo).
Additional note from Nick:
Although the Folder
Properties window looks the same in ArcCatalog and Windows Explorer, I
recommend using ArcCatalog to check folder permissions. I unchecked
"Read-only" in Windows Explorer and it didn't seem to change ArcInfo's
idea of what the folder permissions were. I checked the same folder's
properties in ArcCatalog, unchecked the "Read-only" box again, and finally
things worked. Yet another reason to stick with ArcCatalog when dealing
with GIS files.
Another additional note from Nick:
Unless you somehow
accidently manually check the "Read-only" box, I think the only likely
way to accidently get a read-only folder is when you have copied in the
folder from another disk, especially from a UNIX directory (or perhaps
a CD, which would be read-only) where files and folders are assigned certain
restrictions by default. It may therefore be handy to know this command,
which will add write permission for a file(s) or folder at a UNIX prompt:
chmod
u+w {file/folder name}
Although Windows95/98
allows you to create directory and file names with spaces in them, they
will cause an error when fed into the path name (e.g., in ArcToolbox "Input
file" or "Output dataset:" box). Just don't use spaces in directories
and file names to be used with ArcInfo stuff.