Blog GIS & Territories

We will begin a series of tutorials for the new application available with ArcGis 10.3, ArcGis Pro.

This first chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the interface.

What’s up?Ribbon!

ArcGIS Pro uses a rectangular ribbon at the top of the application to display and organize its features in a series of tabs. The ribbon only shows the tools that are relevant to the current task. Rather than taking up space on the screen to display a series of toolbars-some of which you cannot even use-the ribbon is contextual and updates to reflect current work opportunities. In this way, ArcGIS Pro can provide a large number of features in a simple way, without overwhelming you. When you have an open map, you simply see the commands that work with maps. The ribbon tabs appear as you need them, such as the specific tools for the raster layers that appear when you work with this kind of data.

The ribbon helps you find and use commands directly and efficiently, with a minimum number of mouse clicks and fewer trials and errors. The ribbon icons are large, which allows a quick location of the desired tool. The ribbon also reduces the number of dialog boxes that appear on the map and forces you to stop working. You focus on your content while making the changes interactively. The ribbon offers many possibilities of customization to simplify your work. You can group the tools you use most often and even share these changes with your colleagues. You can add or remove tools from the Ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar, which is a small toolbar at the top of the application, always visible.

quick access bar

You can also add items to a gallery, or collection, of tools, styles, or other items. Several tabs have default galleries, and you can add your own favourites. For example, the analysis tab contains a gallery of commonly used geoprocessing tools. When you have a tool that you frequently use, you can add it to the Gallery so that you can access and run it quickly. You can also use keyboard shortcuts to access the ribbon buttons. If you want to gain more display space, you can minimize the ribbon and, only, view it when you need it.

Ribbon behaviour

Here is the ribbon:

The Ribbon It consists of a series of tabs:

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The tabs And from the current tab gallery:

The gallery In the tab we find buttons that execute a command:

A button of the gallery But also shared buttons, which execute the command like the normal buttons if we click on it, but which have a small arrow that rolls out a menu to select which command to launch by default with the button.

A shared button

The Tabs

There is a series of tabs that are always present: Project, Insertion, Analysis, View and Share Next to the first tab (Project) you will always have a tab corresponding to the type of active window in the central window, the View window

The view window

When you have an active map in the central window, you will have a Map tab, while if you have an active Layout, the tab will be Layout, or if you are doing a Layout Template Processing you will have the ModelBuilder tab, etc. Depending on the context of the job, popup tabs are automatically added. They are recognizable at first sight because they have a beige background

Contextual tabs

The View window The active view, which is your main window (the application’s work area), determines the buttons that appear on each base tab, as well as the other tabs that may be on the ribbon.
Each creation operation of a view adds a tab to the view window.

View window tabs

Click on a tab to activate this view. Ribbon elements are automatically updated to display the tools for that type of view. For example, if you have a map in the active view, you see a Map tab and tools for working with map content, including navigation, labelling, and layer symbology. When you open a layout view, the Map tab is replaced with a Page Layout tab containing commands that apply directly to the layouts.
You can have multiple views open at the same time, i.e. loaded in the viewport, but only one of them can be active at a given time. You know which view is active by looking at which tab is coloured blue. In the above image, the Map view is active, while two other views are open (Layout and Model) but are not active.

The panes

If you know ArcMap, at this point, you think that in the end it will be easy to find the order we are looking for. If I told you that all the commands of ArcMap were inserted in the ribbon and that at first glance you will be able to do what you want, you will not believe me … and you are right!
At some point it must be complicated. And that’s what happens with the panels. In the following figure we see two: the Content panel and the Geoprocessing panel. The first corresponds to the Arcmap legend window and the second to the Toolbox.

Interface panes

And what complicates (a bit) the task is that panes are full!
Let’s be honest: compared to ArcMap it’s much better, it’s more “logic”, but we still cannot say it’s intuitive. It will still happen to get lost in the meandering panes, tabs at the bottom of the pane… Open panes can be reduced “Pined”, on the edge of the interface and reopened with a single click.

Reduced panes

Reorganization of the interface

You can organize the shutters and views as desired to help you enlarge your work area and reduce clutter. The top corner of each shutter has a pin that allows you to freeze the pane at that location or hide it automatically. A pane that has been minimized appears along the side of the window with its name. After developing a smaller pane, it will be automatically reduced again when you click on another place outside the pane.

To move a pane to a new location, drag its title bar. When you do this, blue arrows appear, representing the different locations where the pane can be docked, including stacked on the other panes or views. Place it on a blue target to get a preview of where the pane will be installed, if you drop it there. If you want the pane to become floating above the other elements, release the mouse button outside the blue targets. If you have two open views, such as two maps or a map and a layout, you can anchor them to see them side-by-side.

We have discussed the interface. We can now start loading our data … in the next chapter.

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Atilio Francois