The ArcPad Team Blog

Unofficial stuff from the team behind the World's leading mobile GIS platform

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sneaky Tip: Adding icons for Layers and QuickCapture



Hi everyone,
Have you ever noticed that the Riverside sample has different icons displayed from the symbology on the QuickCapture toolbar and Table of Contents for the some of the layers?

Ever wondered how easy it is to put them there? Of couse you have!

In the ArcPad Data Manager on the "Select Data" page, feature layers from your map are listed with a yellow symbol indicating the feature type (point, line or polygon).



If you use your mouse and click the symbol that you want to change, the select icon dialog will appear. Simply navigate to the location where you have an icon stored and select it.


Once you select the new icon, you will see it has been set as the symbol for that layer. Another cool thing is that the data manager will save the configuration for the MXD you have open and will be automatically applied the next time you use the wizard.Now open your newly created ArcPad Map (.APM), go to the QuickCapture toolbar and see your new icon(s) present.So remember, this doesn't change any symbology on the map itself, it purely allows you to supply another visual context for the layer(s) throughout the application

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Customizing ArcPad with COM and .NET


If you're an ArcPad Developer, you would be familiar with the ArcPad Object Model, but, did you know that you also have access to a lot of objects from the Component Object Model (COM)?

In Windows there's a large number of useful COM objects (e.g. Scripting.FileSystemObject, Microsoft.XMLDOM, Microsoft.XMLHTTP, ADODB.Connection). Using these objects you can manipulate files, folders, manipulate XML documents, make REST/SOAP AJAX calls and connect to databases like SQL Server.

In Windows Mobile there's a useful subset of COM objects (e.g. Microsoft.XMLDOM, Microsoft.XMLHTTP, ADOCE.Connection).

Dim xmldom
Set xmldom = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xmldom.loadXML "<helloworld></helloworld>"
MsgBox xmldom.xml

In addition to Windows, you can probably obtain 3rd party COM objects.

If you are savvy with Visual Studio you can create your own COM objects. There are various tutorials on the internet on how to do this. For example A Simple COM tutorial using ATL. Recently, I stumbled upon Raymund Macaalay's How to call a .NET DLL from a VBScript technical blog which I found to be a nice read. I followed the blog and was able to create his C# .NET class and call it from an ArcPad script!

In a nutshell, by leveraging COM you can customize ArcPad in even more ways.

Friday, January 06, 2012

GeoMobile Innovations announces 2012 ArcPad training schedule

GeoMobile Innovations announces 2012 ArcPad training schedule. ArcPad 10 Bootcamp (link: http://www.geomobileinnovations.com/training/arcpad-bootcamp) and ArcPad Studio 10 training (link: http://www.geomobileinnovations.com/training/arcpad-studio-with-enterprise-management) are both back and updated for latest ArcPad 10 service packs.

The next ArcPad Studio with Enterprise Management Tricks & Tips class will be held in Portland, OR on February 6th/7th. The next ArcPad 10 Bootcamp will be held in Anchorage, AK on March 19th/20th, 2012. 

More training is scheduled for 2012.  Send in your registration form today to secure a seat for this great investment in ArcPad/Mobile GIS training!  Download a complete PDF registration packet including class descriptions, course schedule and training locations at: