I'm with you there about the need for multiple layouts. I attended a Arc GIS Rollout session and when the tech's said that there was only one layout per Project there was concern from everyone in the room about this harsh fact. So I don't think you are the only one in this situation. I am in the same dilemma about moving over. Hope that makes you feel a little better. Regards Matt Liapis GIS Mapping Specialist Colliers Commerce CRG Salt Lake City, Utah Gerarado: My comments about AV 8.1. ************************************************************ This whole issue is a comedy!! I represent "theEngine" extension and use it EVERY DAY with AV 3.2a. BELIEVE ME.. AV 3.2a with theEngine gives you 90% of ARCINFO capability....NO BS !!! It's all marketing and sales and not the vision ESRI had in the very beginning. We tested AV 8.x It's slower in production than AV 3.2a with theEngine and will cost a lot more later. Check out the engineers website and talk to me later. http://www.geokinetic.com/ Bob Johnson, Geographer http://www.rmjohnsoncompany.com Hi, Unfortunatly, the current ArcObjects data model only supports one "layout" at a time or for that matter only one "View". There is a possibility that ESRI (or some third party) might extend the data model at a later date but I would not count on it for a while. ONE Layout at a time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???? Jae Manzella Miami-Dade MPO 305-375-1647 I also use multiple layouts -- what a pain, just from the point of view of documentation. I'll add this to my list of reasons not to go to ArcView 8 right away (my biggest one is that I use a lot of Avenue scripts and extensions that I don't want to give up). Hey, I hope you'll sum. Kathi Hannaford, Union Co. GIS SUM: I received many responses to my query about upgrading to AV8.1. Most of them from people who had attended roll-out seminars, so they knew more than I did, but had not always worked with the actual product. The short answer is: 1. AV8.1 has an import utility that will import AV3.2 projects, but only a single layout into any one map document. There is no way to go back to AV3.2 from an AV8.1 document. 2. Everyone agreed that AV8 (and Arc 8) is a resource-pig: my current computer (PII-400), which works fine for most applications, doesn't come anywhere close to the minimum specs for AV8. Some responses indicated that even with top-of-the-line equipment (1.4 GHz, 256+MB RAM), the ArcMap 8.0.2 is sluggish and not useful for production work. The 8.1 version is supposed to address this, but no-one said "it's much better". 3. There are no conversion tools for Avenue scripts (AV 8 uses Visual Basic), so any customizations/extensions will have to be redone for AV8. Many responses suggested waiting with upgrading until there are more user-built extensions and such (but who will make those if we all wait?) 4. One respondent indicated that the "basic" AV 8.1 doesn't let you edit shapefiles unless you buy an additional module. This would be a big problem. From the responses, I concluded that the significant improvement in AV 8.1 appears to be in map symbology, labelling, and such, so it should be a better tool than AV3.2 for producing printable maps. Below is the response from Iain Allen, which is typical and includes a link to a handy review document. Thanks to everyone for their input! Hi Robert, ArcView 8.1 will import 3.2 projects, but there are some limitations. No scripts will come across as Avenue is incompatible with ArcView 8.1. In addition, only one layout can be imported per project. Also, if you do specify a layout to import, only those Views used in that layout will be imported. Conversely, if you don't specify a layout to import, all Views can be imported. For an overview of other things to consider before upgrading, see the April issue of my free ArcView e-newsletter, ArcView Tips and Tricks, at www.geoinfoserv.com. Gerry, No, you're not the only one who has a problem with the one-layout issue. What bugs me even more is that ESRI won't be upfront about it, as usual. All the promo material for the product says that 8.1 "retains all the functionality of ArcView." Well, no it doesn't, does it, if it won't support multiple layouts? Of course, this is an old ESRI habit, making claims that aren't quite true. Hasn't ESRI always said you can use data from multiple projections in ArcView (and neglected to say that you just can't use them at the same time)? Or how about PC ArcInfo 4.0 -- it has image support! (yes, but only for BMP files -- who has DOQQs or grids or DRGs in BMP format?) and it supports double precision coverages! (yes, but it doesn't support SINGLE precision coverages, which is what all the legacy data was -- and AV 3.x, which is all that was available when AI 4.0 came out, can't use double precision). Why can't ESRI just be forthright? By the way, I've seen/heard plenty of other complaints about the loss of multiple layouts, even from people (like me) who are otherwise impressed with the improvements in AV 8.1. Look forward to your sum. Mike Michael A. Mayhak GIS Analyst Mackin Engineering Company R.I.D.C. Park West 117 Industry Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15275-1015 Phone: (412) 788-0472 Fax: (412) 787-3588 E-mail: mam@mackinengineering.com Web: www.mackinengineering.com Gerardo, I feel exactly as you do. Until multiple layouts are well supported, we will depend on Arcview 3.x Multiple layouts are critical to the efficiency of our operation. Each project is a tool that must do many jobs. When I asked ESRI folks about this limitation, they tried to call it a feature, not a bug, and indicated that it was simply a different way to work, that I'd get used to it. I sure can't see it that way. I'd like to encourage a revolt among users to force a robust multiple layout capability in ArcGIS 8.x Tom Shindler Clallam County DCD P.O. Box 863 Port Angeles, WA 98362 (360) 417-2322 tshindler@co.clallam.wa.us Gerry: I can not agree more. It is a rare circumstance when we have only one layout per .apr. Do not know what ESRI was thinking or the user community surveyed. On the other hand, we could be missing some nuance about how 8.1 works. ... Al -- ************************************ Alvan A. Karlin, Ph.D. Biological Research Associates/CognoCartaGIS 3910 US Highway 301 N Suite 180 Tampa, Florida 33617 813.664.4500/813.261.7149 www.CognocartaGIS.com ************************************ Gerry, I saw your post in the ESRI-L digest for yesterday. Hopefully you haven't summed already (if so, just ignore mine). Multiple layouts in a project is critical to us. Our mappers use them all the time in order to tie related maps (or time sequences of maps) for projects together into one file. So to us it is critical and we find this limitation in 8.x to be a problem. And you are right, having to open and close projects all the time is a pain -- much easier to have it in one project file. Even further, many of our maps have insets (such as for our county highway maps, with larger scale insets of particular places). We generate those insets very economically using the ESRI-provided "Named Extents" extension. That too is missing in 8.x, which will cause us to need to have multiple copies of the same themes in the data layout just to support each inset plus the main map version. For detailed data sets, this quickly adds up to a ton of data that ArcMap will attempt to load into memory, degrading the performance even further from its already slow performance. Cheers, Kevin Anderson --------------------------------------- Kevin L. Anderson, GIS Specialist ND DOT, Planning & Programming Division 701-328-3736 klanders@state.nd.us