Follow the dawning realisation that the GIS world is far too busy analysing the world Elliot Hartley, Teresa Baldwin & Dragons8mycat have begun to put together a list of useful add-ins so that we can share in our useful tips & tricks.
Free Tools
- ArcBruTile – Map tile addin for ArcGIS, allows use of OSM, Stamen, Bing and other WMS/WMST background maps
- OS Opendata Basemaps – Free Ordnance Survey basemaps through ESRI UK, all styled (including greyscale) including Vectormap, boundaryline, strategi & 1:250k
- LASTools – A set of free tools for working with point cloud data. Extremely efficient and useful for working with big data
- Tools for Graphics and Shapes v. 2.1.85 – Free tools with a great little tool to calculate the true area of objects and to create centroids of polygons easily. (Thanks to François Goulet)
- Easy Calculate 10 – This is a .NET version of the excellent EC50 tool by Ian Ko. Tools for adding random numbers to attributes, get feature scale, max & min azimuth amongst a few (Thanks to Geographic Design)
- Get XYZM – Unlike the geometry calculator already in ArcGIS, this tool allows you to automatically add the columns and gives a text entry option so that you can name the fields as you want. (Thanks to Geographic Design)
- Polygon to centreline – Useful tool for creating a centreline from any polygon. (Thanks to Geographic Design)
- Batch Export & Print – An invaluable tool for export of multiple mxds…without the need to open them individually. Warning! May have issues with ArcGIS 10.1 sp1
Free (limited) Tools
- ET Geowizards – Add-in for ArcGIS which provides many free vector conversion tools.
- Xtools Pro – Add-in for ArcGIS with additonal tools, some are free though the full version is relatively cheap. Tools include the “Extract map” which will extract all data in the dataframe to a new geodatabase!
“Repeating Shapes” and “Tools for Graphics and Shapes” from Jenness Ent. are pretty useful. use them all the time! http://www.jennessent.com/arcgis/arcgis_extensions.htm