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ArcGIS is widely used across various industries and departments for a range of tasks. Users have found it valuable for assessing distances …
Starting at $100 per year
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What is ArcGIS?
Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.
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$100
On Premise
per year
ArcGIS for Personal Use
$100
On Premise
per year
ArcGIS for Student Use
$100
On Premise
per year
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
ArcGIS Online Join Features Demo 3 – Join to a table based on common attribute
YouTube
How to use Symbology demo in ArcGIS 10 - GT-101 - Washington College
YouTube
ArcGIS Collector App (iOS & Android)
YouTube
ArcGIS Maps for Power BI Demo - Drive Time Analysis
YouTube
Introduction to Python in ArcGIS Pro
YouTube
Curso online DEMO: ArcGIS aplicado a la Cartografía Geológica l Explorock
YouTube
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What is ArcGIS?
ArcGIS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.
The most common users of ArcGIS are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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ArcGIS is widely used across various industries and departments for a range of tasks. Users have found it valuable for assessing distances between clinic sites and patient locations, generating maps, integrating data, and conducting spatial data analysis. It has become the go-to tool for logistics network optimization at FedEx and is extensively used in architecture, engineering, and civil engineering projects. In educational settings, ArcGIS is commonly used for completing projects and research tasks. It also plays a crucial role in research projects related to geography and groundwater chemistry analysis. Furthermore, ArcGIS facilitates collaboration between different fields of research and offers sophisticated visualization and statistical analysis capabilities. The software is integrated with mapping platforms to optimize operations across industries. Additionally, it has been instrumental in solving location and planning problems, promoting organized development, facilitating cartography, creating infographics, and presenting data in a visually engaging manner.
Versatile Tool: Users have found ArcGIS to be a versatile tool for planning and promoting organized development in various territories. It allows for the visualization, management, editing, calculation, and analysis of georeferenced entities and attributes. Many reviewers appreciate its wide range of possibilities with geographic data.
Intuitive Interface: ArcGIS is praised for its easy-to-use interface and intuitive menus. Users find it easy to learn, with localized tools that make navigation straightforward. The intuitive user interface has been mentioned by multiple reviewers as a positive aspect of using ArcGIS.
Powerful Integration: Reviewers highly value ArcGIS's powerful integration with other systems. They appreciate the continuous enhancement and upgrades that keep the software up-to-date. Additionally, the rock-solid ArcGIS.com cloud technology has been commended by users for its reliability and convenience.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the user interface of ArcGIS, finding it confusing and difficult to get used to. Some reviewers have suggested that a usability study should be conducted to improve the work process.
Expensive Cost: The high cost of ArcGIS is a common concern among users, especially for small companies and professionals in underdeveloped countries. Reviewers mention the expensive price of the software itself as well as the high annual maintenance fees compared to the new features provided.
Installation and Technical Support Issues: Users have reported problems with the installation process for new versions of ArcGIS, often requiring technical support. They have requested training materials and user-friendly videos to better utilize and understand the software.
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Reviews
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May 22, 2022
Trusted Leader
ArcGIS integrates with mapping and staking platform provided by NISC and is used to map services and is used in multiple iVUE applications such as CIS, OMS, Map Viewer, AppSuite and iVUE Connect. ArcGIS Server helps to optimize our operations and day-to-day workflow.
- Tight integration with NISC and other commercial systems
- Helps to make better informed decisions and improve service
- Planning new infrastructure and locating existing underground infrastructure
- Building in more help tools into the application itself
- Less restrictions on the licensing
- Price could be lower but you really do get a lot of capability
November 13, 2020
ArcGIS, I couldn't live without it. Best product in the world
I have been a user of ArcGIS Desktop since the initial release of 8.0, and I manage a team of people that use it. It's currently used by pretty much every department at my municipality, from Emergency Operations, field data collection, internally mapping requests to name a few. The tools are used daily by staff that need to create report maps, determining if an planning application is viable. Our staff have also developed 3D models and are served up through web services to internal and external parties. We have also taken advantage of their portal technology for the publishing of Open Data. The tools have streamlined our business processes, and we can not function with out them.
- Easy to use and learn
- Extremely powerful for integration with other systems
- Always being enhanced and upgraded
- The ArcGIS.com cloud technology is rock solid
- If your not on an Enterprise License Agreement, it can be expensive
- If you are migrating to, this can be difficult. Use a consultant to assist
April 14, 2020
Not for small business!
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Territory development.
- Powerful.
- Intuitive.
- User friendly.
- GIS software for big or specialized business.
- Expensive.
- Weak service.
- Weak and slow technical support.
- Complex method to licensing (6 months later, we don't have access to all purchases).
- Dependence on technical support.
January 13, 2020
ArcGIS does geography better than anyone else, but not always the fastest or easiest
ArcGIS is used by our organization to accomplish many geographic modeling tasks. The tasks include geocoding, building interactive web maps, creating analytical models to answer business questions, and for other advanced geographic analyses. The software is used across the organization by IT professionals as well as professional analysts with the technical know-how to address geographic questions.
- ArcGIS is world-class with geographic analyses.
- ArcGIS works well with web applications.
- ArcGIS takes forever to open, and it seems to be getting slower with every new release.
- The creators of the ArcGIS software make it more difficult to create add-ins for the product than what could be done with an open-source solution.
We have one named user license with ArcGIS as well as Open Streetmap Premium to enable us to geocode addresses for what is otherwise considered to be protected health information. This geocoded data is then plotted on map visualizations usually outside of ArcGIS where we can asses visual and geographic distance between our clinic sites and where our patients live.
- Geocoding is very fast with StreetMap Premium.
- Easy to use interface good for novices and experts alike.
- Allows for geocoding to building location vs. mapping address which is useful for several of our applications.
- Exporting data into excel as a CSV is a little clunky there should be a more intuitive way to do this.
- License configuration is impossible to do for the end user. I needed customer support to walk me through every step is was much too complicated.
- Updating street maps is confusing I would prefer a more intuitive interface that launches directly from ArcGIS to do this.
October 23, 2019
A great product for managing geospatial data.
My organization engages is civil engineering projects related to transportation planning, traffic operations and safety planning. We support the Iowa DOT on their projects. We use ArcGIS extensively for working with geospatial data such as traffic and vehicle locations, crash sites, pavement monitoring sites etc. We use geodatabes and shapefiles extensively for handling large data sets. We also use queries to find specific information.
- Storing information in the form of shapefiles is a big advantage
- Using geodatabases to work with large data sets is a strength of ArcGIS
- The ability to solve spatial problems using ArcGIS is a great tool
- Publishing online maps is a great feature
- Improvement in processing speed using CPUs
- Importing CSV files could be made smoother
- The pricing is too high to fully leverage using all the software's capabilities
October 22, 2019
Happy Esri User
We are an R&D Center at a University. Our applications are both internal and external:
Internally, we use ArcGIS to manage university needs, such as campus mapping and inventory. We also use the suite of products for teaching and production work.
Externally, it is used as a core solution for extramural projects - like building a county GIS or similar client needs.
Internally, we use ArcGIS to manage university needs, such as campus mapping and inventory. We also use the suite of products for teaching and production work.
Externally, it is used as a core solution for extramural projects - like building a county GIS or similar client needs.
- Enterprise GIS - multi-user, multi-versioned geodatabase access through a host of apps and web tools really help people stay connected to data.
- Cartography - fantastic control and customization available with the ability to automate workflows.
- Training - tons of training videos, seminars, and other learning materials are easily accessed. The help documentation is superb.
- Ability to manage an organization through dashboards is extremely helpful.
- Hard to find things in Pro that I used frequently in ArcMap.
- Dislike increasing reliance on having everything run as a script.
- User management can get buggy.
October 21, 2019
ArcGIS great for data mapping and statistical spatial analysis!
Our research group, specifically, is using ArcGIS to spatially and statistically analyse groundwater chemistry across a large regional area. It allows for a really comprehensive understanding of the data and how it is spatially constrained, or not. Other research groups across the university, especially geography-related, use ArcGIS in their classes and in their research projects.
- Various kriging/interpolation options for mapping out data and seeing the spatial variance.
- Decent organizations structuring available for folders and subfolders.
- Ability to project data on-the-fly simply, by dragging previously input data into a new data frame.
- Aesthetically, it isn't exactly a modern looking interface, although that doesn't create issues with functionality.
- If happens that if there are any special symbols in the excel spreadsheet you are trying to input, it will not allow the data to be input and will not state what the issue is. Best practice is no spaces, no special characters, join words with underscores.
- Probably highly dependent on how much 'power' your computer has but often the interpolations and calculations take quite a long time to compute.
ArcGIS is being used by our organization to map incidents, assets, work orders, and other features. It is used by almost all departments organization-wide to provide quick answers and analysis to spatial questions. Many problems can be better represented and analyzed in a spatial format. GIS provides the tools for that and in particular, ESRI's ArcGIS set of tools is expansive.
- ArcGIS has continuously developed its toolset to provide an effective and easy to use GIS application to solve any problems that present themselves in a spatial format (the where in a who what where problem).
- The tools themselves while complex in nature are fairly easy to learn and ESRI provides excellent training for them as well.
- The software itself is an industry-standard and this makes it easy to find educated, experienced, and skilled employees.
- Their support is very good. They are responsive, knowledgeable, and good with follow-through.
- The newest user interface is well designed, easy to pick up and very comprehensive.
- As the software has developed, the primary application has gone a couple of different directions. The latest versions have seemed to bring that back together. Hopefully, that will continue for the foreseeable future.
- Cost is something that can be a hindrance to smaller organizations. We hope they would continue to work on their cost model to improve it in particular as it relates to the smaller government space.
We utilize ArcGIS Server and ArcMap products from ESRI. Some of the data we manage is our sanitary and stormwater systems, parcels, streets, and road signs. We use ArcGIS to conduct our field inspections for sanitary sewer and stormwater which helps us with determining the correct maintenance action to perform. Our zoning map and voting maps are all in our GIS system as well which makes changing boundaries very easy. ArcGIS online allows us to publish our maps to the internet which allows our mobile teams to access our GIS data in real time.
- ArcGIS makes exporting maps to PDF documents very simple - file-export and 30 seconds later you have a PDF.
- The editing tools for ArcGIS are very powerful and allow us to make changes on the fly with little effort.
- ArcGIS online publishes our maps to the internet with only a few clicks within the client application.
- If you don't have any existing ArcGIS products, it's a very expensive piece of software to acquire.
- Annual maintenance fees are rather high compared to the new features that you get.
- You will need a computer with a powerful graphics card to fully utilize all of the software's capabilities.
November 05, 2018
Geographical information system for the planning, analysis, evaluation and development of the territory.
The program is used by the planning and development direction of the company. Thanks to ArcGIS, it has managed to solve problems of location of services and jobs by means of data vectoring, geo-referencing of polygons and superposition of data. It has been an excellent tool for planning the territory in order to promote organized development. This program has helped in the visualization, administration, edition, calculation, analysis of entities and geo-referenced attributes in different works. I also managed to solve the difficulties in the elaboration of cartography with thematic layers previously identified by a characteristic indicated when starting to work in ArcGIS.
- Geo-referencing of data for the exact location of an object for the planning and development of the territory.
- Is a program with excellent work tools for visualization, administration, editing, calculation, analysis of entities and attributes geo-referenced in different jobs.
- Contains multiple work tools that allow the elaboration of cartography with thematic layers previously identified by a characteristic indicated when starting to work in ArcGIS.
- I consider it difficult to use, it has an interface that needs to be studied to offer the user the use of the applications in a simpler and simpler way.
- It is an expensive program that requires the investment of a large sum of money, which can be used to modify other work areas.
- Is a program that requires a greater installed capacity of the computer so that the tools work correctly, being a disadvantage that can generate a delay in the delivery of the work.
August 01, 2018
ArcGIS, Complete and functional
ArcGIS is used by two departments in my place of work, with this software we approach the elaboration of thematic maps. We also use it to plan the territory and analyze the impact of possible projects on the environment.
- Analysis of the territory.
- Advanced functions for maps and plans.
- Cost of the license.
- Incompatibility of old formats in the new versions of ArcGIS, for example, work done in ArcGIS 9 many times is not compatible with Arcgis 10.0.
Arcgis is being used by the engineering department for the geographic location of all the company's commercial offices, it is an excellent tool that has allowed working with very large databases, systematized by maps or ideal tables for analysis and decision making. Using ArcGIS the company addresses the way to be more efficient in the delivery of materials, equipment, and personnel that the company decides to mobilize throughout the national territory, in order to reduce cost and maximize profits.
- It allows the work with JPG image to vectorize data, georeferencing of polygons and superposition of data.
- It is a very important tools to plan the territory in order to promote the organized development.
- It has a set of tools that facilitates the visualization, management, editing, calculation, analysis of georeferenced entities and attributes in different jobs.
- It has an option for professional quality work of cartographies.
- It offers the possibility of working by thematic layer previously identified, being ideal for the planning of the territory and the design of the cartographies that we need for the work.
- It is a program that in general is very difficult to use.
- I do not like the interface, I think they should carry out a usability study to improve the work process, with the purpose that it is easier to use.
- It is a program that requires updated computer equipment so that the functions of ArcGIS can work correctly.
- I consider that there is little variety offered by ArcGIS for the design of cartography.
- It is an expensive program that requires an investment that small companies can not cover.
April 13, 2018
ArcGIS Review - Powerful but Slow and Expensive
ArcGIS is used by my department in the earth sciences. It allows sophisticated visualization and statistical analysis of geospatial data. It is also used by some other departments (e.g. astronomy and archaeology) for ad-hoc needs.
- ArcGIS can handle multiple data types natively and usually without error. This mixing allows for more in-depth analysis than with a less robust software suite.
- ArcGIS has ready-to-use basemaps that save time when doing quick work.
- ArcGIS often allows multiple solutions to a problem. This user flexibility makes for a more comfortable experience.
- There are frequently errors when using some tools, and the descriptions on these errors are often vague and unhelpful. This makes troubleshooting very difficult.
- ArcGIS is slow for many tasks, which makes for an annoying experience - particularly with large datasets.
- ArcGIS is expensive. Licenses may be out of reach for some researchers or organizations.
March 26, 2018
Hurricane winds through a GIS
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Initially is was used by me to analyze and characterize the historical trajectories of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
Its versatility and ability to work phenomena in geographical coordinates and across different time zones allowed me to analyze the behavior of hurricanes since 1851. With other programs such as AutoCAD it would have been impossible to do so. It is currently being used to characterize the rainfall pattern in Venezuela. Different people of the company are being trained in the use of this tool, with the local commercial representative (Esri).
- It allows to work and analyze phenomena on a large scale.
- The fact that one is able to work in geographical coordinates makes it much more versatile for these tasks than programs such as AutoCAD or similar, designed to work in smaller domains.
- The interpolation functions that it has can be extended and improved.
- The interface with the user can also be improved so that any user who uses it for the first time, can access to understand the program more easily.
March 16, 2018
The best GIS tool
In my performance as a geography professional I have used ArcGis for the regionalization of the territory, the analysis of the regional urban system of different territorial areas, and the construction of topographic and thematic cartography for territorial diagnosis.
- I think it's easy to use, has a friendly interface and a wide range of geoprocessing tools available.
- I also like that it has several options to achieve the same result, being able to choose the best one according to the circumstances
- In addition, the cartographic output is very professional. It is incomparable.
- It can be very slow. It requires a powerful computer to execute tasks quickly, because It uses a lot of RAM
- The costs of this software are enormous for the initial purchase price and the subsequent yearly fees for the product.
- Limited options for incorporating graphics into maps
March 01, 2018
ArcGIS Multi professional software
Currently, ArcGIS is used with several product options. First are maps for a specific theme; there are maps for hydraulics systems and there are heat maps for population behavior. My company, has two main users; the other three people are field professionals, and they are always are looking for the latest information of some focused theme, like a traffic mobility or flood risk near Caracas.
- Cartographic output
- Data process
- Attribute fields
- Load field data information
- Create raster procesed information from basic data
- Every project occupied lots of computer memory
- Makes the computer run slow
- It's a very expensive software
February 19, 2018
ArcGIS is great for mapping once the program is learned
Several people throughout our company use ArcGIS to create visual stories through maps. We often work with cities, because of which we need to make maps using parcel data.
- ArcGIS is very good at allowing one to incorporate data from different sources, for example matching parcel shapefiles to Excel-based data on certain parcels.
- When used properly, ArcGIS can be good at showing compelling stories visually. This is useful when one needs to convey geographical information quickly.
- ArcGIS does a good job of maintaining a consistent interface over different updates. This makes it easier for someone, once trained in ArcGIS, to adapt quickly to a new version.
- ArcGIS can be a difficult interface to get used to for new users. There are many tools at one's fingertips, but it takes a while to learn them. A standard tutorial program may be available, but should be marketed more to companies that use ArcGIS.
- I'd like to see ArcGIS connect more to publicly available shapefile data that could be accessed and incorporated directly through the program.
- I think a user forum, with input from administrators, similar to what IMPLAN provides, would be very useful. This could help users ask questions and get answers on tips for using ArcGIS.
- I don't really like the credit-based subscription system to which ArcGIS transitioned. Perhaps it's more fair overall, as it links usage to cost, but the fact that credits do not carry over seems like a punishment for the subscribers who use ArcGIS moderately.
January 12, 2018
The best GIS on the market
Well, ArcGIS has been used in my organization since 2010, when happened de Mayon change in the municipality, with the intention of obtaining real data of the urbanization and people for making them pay taxes. The software is only used in the Catastral Department, not in other locations. The main problem that is the transition from a trial version for one that had been paid, it was very expensive for the organization and limit the number of users.
- ArcGIS has an excellent core of tools to make possible everything you need in spatial analysis, from analysis of raster data to the conversion of CAD file to shapefile to simplify their use
- The simple use of the software is its other great virtues, it is very easy to use, very friendly with the user, the localizations of the tools, the intuitive nature of the menus and the facility to open and save the files
- The exit format of the maps maybe it is other of the great advantages of ArcGIS in comparison with other GIS, you have a big range of formats to save your map images, and that allows you to uses in any way you like
- The first thing is the cost, it is a very expensive software for countries of the underdeveloped world, so the professionals of GIS who want to use it, sometimes observe a big range of limitations, because we can use only a few tools that the organization pay and our analysis sometimes are limited because of that.
- For a rookie user, maybe the software can be overwhelming, seeing so many tools and so many options and features maybe can be afraid or do not know where to start, so it is necessary to prepare a big range of tutorials for people that do not know anything about the GIS, because they can be a possible users but maybe they can be afraid of the software
- The process of installation of a new version in our case bring us a big problem because the software does not want to be uninstalled so we have to contact technical support to make the transition from version 9.3 to 10 and that delay many of our work
December 05, 2017
ArcGIS, a great Enterprise GIS application/platform
ArcGIS from the ESRI has become the Fedex corporate standard. We use its Geo-location services, Mapping services, helping operational research, and engineering planning, for optimizing the Fedex express/logistics network. Fedex uses ArgGIS to provide the geospatial
solutions that are extensible to multiple business applications by
providing GIS infrastructure to enable rapid integration of GIS
capabilities into global FedEx business applications.
- ArcGIS is a great for displaying large amounts of geographic data. The online interactive platform ArcGIS Online is very useful.
- The documentation of ArcGIS is very helpful and detail.
- The graphical interface of ArcGis is user friendly.
- ArcGIS is an powerful suite of applications and tools that all work together seamlessly for a complete desktop, mobile, and web solution.
- The Python integration and REST API are make it more powerful and flexible, allowing you programmatically to access the data in a variety of ways.
- The online help/forum changes too frequently.
- Being the major paid GIS software, there is no real competition. But sometimes random crush will make the user disappointed.
- Little bit too "black-box", any processes completed, ranging from geocoding to slope interpolations, do not have an exhaustive list of steps taken to reach the specific geo-coordinates, making understanding very difficult.
October 30, 2017
Use Mapping as a Data Tool on ArcGIS
ArcMAP/ArcGIS is new for the department that I work with. I, on the other hand, have previous experience working with ArcGIS from my university. I currently use ArcGIS as a way to map prevalence and incidence estimates of several behavioral risk factors in my state. The prevalence and incidence estimates can be entered or uploaded to the attribute table in ArcGIS, where differences are illustrated using symbols (graduated colors or polygons). Spatial mapping is also important for our team. Hotspot analysis, address geocoding, and spatial rate and smoothers are easily done on the ArcGIS system. ArcGIS does a great job mapping X,Y coordinates which you can then spatially join on your map. In addition to spatial analysis, ArcGIS allows you to use python code to run the geo-processing tools that allow you to do the spatial analysis, buffers, joins, and much more!
- ArcGIS is great at mapping geo-coded data (specifically data with X,Y coordinates like addresses or events in certain places).
- Using ArcToolbox on GIS allows you to do many different analyses including spatial analysis, spatial statistics, hot-spot analysis, and joins with the many geo-processing tools.
- ArcGIS is a great application for mapping health-related data, visually. Incidence and prevalence data can easily be visualized by using symbols or colors on your map. The layout view allows you to customize your map by adding a North arrow, legend, and scale bar.
- ArcGIS can sometimes freeze or perform tasks slowly when too many geo-processing tools have been used on the MAP.
- ArcGIS could be improved by having a better support page. It is difficult to get the answers you need if you are unsure of how to, for example, perform spatial auto-correlations on your map.
- ArcGIS is only for data that can be spatially represented, and that is its limitation.
October 24, 2017
The good old ArcGIS
Our GIS department uses as the main GIS tool, as an individual and collaborative tool. Our use is supported by our clients' needs. We use it to make vectorial databases for cities and states in urban and rural areas. ArcGIS provides to us a full set of tools to make our work organized and productive.
- Full set of tools
- Interoperability
- Collaboration
- Tools are too bureaucratic
- Toolbox tools have a slow interface
April 18, 2017
ArcGIS almost does it all
ArcGIS provides the tools for both our customers and our team to catalog, visualize, and analyze spatial data. When training, I always ask my class what industry wouldn't benefit from spatial data and it's really a trick question because I believe there isn't one. In other words, being able to add dimension and depth to data that an organization already has from a spatial perspective is invaluable. Let's say you have some addresses of all of your customers in a database. With a flat table, there isn't much more you can do. But with GIS, you can map those addresses and come up with hot spots or areas where most of the customers are concentrated. For retail, it may be beneficial to put new stores in these areas. Further, you could introduce things like household income, age range of population, driving distance, and more that may help you make that decision.
- ArcGIS has some really strong cartographic aspects. Users can print or export to various formats such as pdf for sharing with decision makers Or they may leverage some of the interactive capabilities of an ArcGIS Online app which can be made public or secured by logins.
- The current state of ArcGIS Desktop is intuitive and user-friendly. Users can add data, symbolize it and start working with tables in rapid time. In addition, users can easily push their data to a web map with a couple of clicks.
- My favorite aspect of ArcGIS is being able to quickly query out data based on a certain criteria. Users can also merge the data into another layer based on its location. For example, you may have a bunch of building all over the map that need a situs address. Users can merge the building data with underlying parcel data and grab the situs address. The number of buildings per parcel can then be extracted from the data to see if it matches the tax listing. The buildings that don't match up can then be extracted for field work.
- It would be nice if more functions from the Desktop application worked on a tablet. I understand that it is a beefy application so this would be dependent on the capabilities of the device.
Previously, I used ArcGIS in an educational capacity as a student. For a number of years I learned ArcGIS and used it to complete projects, assignments, and other tasks as required for my classwork.
Currently, I use ArcGIS in a personal/educational capacity as a tool to complete my thesis reseach. ArcGIS has proven to be absolutely critical in my thesis research as it is a fully functional GIS suite that in many regards is the industry standard (analogous to the Adobe Suite in the creative fields). Due to its long legacy, ArcGIS contains a huge suite of varied tools for analysis, display, and sharing of my data and results.
Over the years, ArcGIS has transitioned to being a bit more open in many regards. One of the biggest changes was switching the tools over to Python to ease scripting, updating, and modification of the internal tools and analyses. ArcGIS has also improved its ability to import/export various proprietary and open data formats and sources.
Currently, I use ArcGIS in a personal/educational capacity as a tool to complete my thesis reseach. ArcGIS has proven to be absolutely critical in my thesis research as it is a fully functional GIS suite that in many regards is the industry standard (analogous to the Adobe Suite in the creative fields). Due to its long legacy, ArcGIS contains a huge suite of varied tools for analysis, display, and sharing of my data and results.
Over the years, ArcGIS has transitioned to being a bit more open in many regards. One of the biggest changes was switching the tools over to Python to ease scripting, updating, and modification of the internal tools and analyses. ArcGIS has also improved its ability to import/export various proprietary and open data formats and sources.
- Fully-featured and powerful GUI.
- Large library of integrated tools for analysis and visualization.
- Large community of experts, novices, and academics to provide tons of examples, help, and guidance for users.
- Excellent documentation.
- Industry-wide acceptance and usage means ease of deployment and exchange with others.
- Fully x64 native client is needed for large/complex datasets, which are not uncommon in GIS.
- GPU-accelerated analyses is needed as it will reduce analysis times orders of magnitude in most every case.
- Fully multi-threaded analyses where possible. Currently, analyses are almost exclusively single-threaded on the CPU with ArcGIS' GUI running in a separate thread to prevent lockup.
- Better interchange capabilities with Open Data formats and sources like OpenStreetMap.
- Product stability could use some improvement, especially when working on a very large project file.