Dressing Up Feature Service Points

Dressing up for Halloween is an exciting prospect for kids.  It is fun to be a super-hero or fanciful character and then have people give you candy.  One of my favorite costumes was a robot that I made and ran remote control.  I had my little brother set the “decorated box” on the font step and then I operated the robot with fishing line while standing behind a tree/bush/porch etc...   I was a robot on the front step getting candy in one sense, and behind the tree in another sense.  (kind of like feature service editing in ArcGIS for AutoCAD).  Here is a way to dress up my AutoCAD editing and display of ArcGIS feature services.

Read carefully: If I have a block in my drawing that has the same BLOCK INSERT name as the ArcGIS-feature service-AutoCAD layer name (which is the feature service layer name preceded by “esri_”), then my feature service points will be drawn by ArcGIS for AutoAD using that block.  In that way I can define how points from a feature service are drawn in my drawing using my favorite block symbols.  

For example: If I have an existing AutoCAD block with the name METER, that I want to use for my “meter” features service layer called METER_RIVERSIDEWATER  I can simply rename my METER block to "esri_Meter_RiversideWater" and ArcGIS for AutoCAD will insert that block anytime it draws a meter from the feature service.   I will also notice that the tool palette also gets generated with my block symbol.  If I don’t see the image of my block properly I can right click on the tool in the tool palette and select the Update Tool Image option to get a fresh picture of my block.  

I've included a video where I do just that, check out this YouTube video on my GISCADChannel for a full screen view, or the blog version included below.