Original Commandments created/compiled by Lyle A. Burgess: lyle@geoimage.com.au. Modifications/upgrades provided by Chris Clay (christopher_clay@bc.com), Mike Sheremata (his stuff revised by Tammy Kobliuk (Tammy.Kobliuk@gov.ab.ca)), and Matt Wilkie (Matt.Wilkie@gov.yk.ca).
Webmaster's disclaimer: I have not personally tested many of these and cannot attest to their accuracy. Some have been around since the early '90's, one would hope some have been fixed since.... Additions/corrections always welcome. Enjoy.
No. 1: Thou shalt not use dots (".") in a grid filename.
No. 2: Thou shalt not use tabs in AMLs (fixed in Arc 8, and, I think, in workstation
7+)
No. 3: Thou shalt not build a point coverage as poly or vice versa as this
is a deemeth to be a great sin and your pointers will corrupteth.
No. 4: Thou shalt not 'del xx*' while thy neighbour worketh.
No. 5: Thou shalt not use DOS 'delete' or 'del' (or Windows Explorer equivalent)
to delete coverages, attribute files will not be deleted.
No. 6: Thou shall not use DOS 'rename' (or Windows Explorer equivalent) to
rename coverages, link to attribute information (PAT, AAT, etc.) will be lost.
No. 7: Thou shalt not use the default tolerances for clean.
No. 8: Thou shalt not let tolerances default with coverages that cover a large
area.
No. 9: Thou shalt not SORT thy attribute tables in a single INFO/Tables session
without re-sorting on cover# before exiting.
No. 10: Thou shalt not use lower case letters in INFO
No. 11: Thou shall not use the command cd to change directories whilst using
Arc/Info for WORKSPACE be thy way to change directories.
No. 12: Thou shalt not CREATEWORKSPACE with the same name as an existing coverage
(or vice versa), KILL of the coverage will wipe out the workspace.
No. 13: Thou shalt not do ADDITEMs before cover-id in PAT or AAT, link to attribute
data will be lost. Instead pass cover-id as to the ADDITEM command.
No. 14: In INFO, thou shalt not SORT external coverage attribute files (PAT,
AAT, etc.), link to attributes will be lost. Applies to Arcedit also. Instead
use COPYINFO (Arc) to copy the Info file to an new file, then use SORT. Remove
file when finished with ERASE.
No. 15: In INFO thou shalt not ALTER Arc/Info internal items in PAT, AAT, etc.
(AREA, LENGTH, etc), attribute data will be lost. Instead use ADDITEM (Arc)
to create a new item with the definition you want, then use CALCULATE to copy
the data to the new item.
No. 16: In ARCEDIT thou shalt not SAVE session in one window and process the
same coverage in another, even specifying EDITCOVERAGE will not retrieve the
newly processed coverage from the disk. Instead SAVE, QUIT, process, and then
run Arcedit.
No. 17: Thou shalt not edit (or even open) a coverage when someone else is
editing it. (Or, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours coverage.)
No. 18: Thou shalt not use xx as the start of a filename, lest you want ARC
to remove it for you. In the middle of an editing session ARC will produce a
lot of these.
No. 19: Thou shalt be careful when you use BUILD command. Once you use the
point option, you cannot get your polygon back.
No. 20: Thou shall learn to type extremely long commands and command arguments
and never, ever shall thou abbreviate help commands for the Gods of ESRI find
solace and praise in the art of typing.
No. 21: Thou shalt Never, Never make any of the parent directories names of
ANY coverage in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
No. 22: Thou shalt Never, Never let more than one user edit the same coverage.
No. 23: Thous shalt not use digitised tics with RMS errors of less than 0.003
or thou shall find thy coverage drifteth with respect to whereith it should
be and faulty coordinate conversions.
No. 24: Thou shalt always remain awareth of the topology defined for a coverage
and how it is modified by ARC commands in case thy looseth track of where it
goeth.
No. 25: Thous shalt not edit internal INFO files with the system editor or
thou may find thy files unreadable.
No. 26: Thou shalt not delete, change or add new items between standard items
in coverage INFO files. eg)
INFO FILE ITEMS NOT TO BE ALTERED
======= ==================
cover.TIC IDTIC, XTIC, YTIC
cover.BND XMIN, YMIN, XMAX, YMAX
cover.PAT AREA, PERIMETER, cover#, cover-ID
cover.AAT FNODE#, TNODE#, LPOLY#, RPOLY#, LENGTH,
cover#, cover-ID
ARC/INFO expects a standard item format for each file and will not recognise
changes made to it.
No. 27: Thous shalt not add items to the TIC and BND files of a coverage.
No. 28: Thou shalt not copy an existing TIC, BND, PAT, or AAT to another coverage.
No. 29: Thou shalt not use the directory structure of the user workspace to
organise your work. Remember, you can use coverages from more than one workspace
with an ARC/INFO command.
No. 30: Thou shalt be aware of system limitations and organize and structure
your coverages accordingly.
No. 31: Thou shalt not exceed 13 characters in the length of thy coverage names.
For just as surely as the Holy AAT and PAT contain a cover-ID field, every INFO
fieldname is less than 16 bytes. Thus, any more characters than 13 in thy coverage
names ye shall esteem an accident waiting to happen.
No. 32: If thou dost redirect thy Arc/Info's stderr, thy harvest shall be plentiful.
But redirect its stdout, and reap emptiness.
No. 33: Thou shalt not be allowed to go off on a long weekend holiday with
the family while leaving 4 sessions running believing one is getting something
accomplished, because the Lord of ARC shall decree that everything will crash
with a FATAL ERROR just after thou'est depart from the office.
No. 34: Remember that thou art wrestling with a gorilla and you should act accordingly
No. 35: Thou shalt always feel PO'ed that ARC allows you to do things you shouldn't WITHOUT complaining.
No. 36: Thou must savest in ArcEdit before doing analysis that requires attribute records to match the number of features in thy coverage.
No. 37: Thou must savest in ArcEdit before doing analysis that requires attribute records to match the number of features in thy coverage.
No: 38: Thou shalt not attempt to dissolve coverages with more than 1 million polygons and expect thy ESRI gods to smile upon you always.
No. 39: Thou shall discover the [show] function in AML and discover a wondrous new world.
No. 40: Thou shall properly document thy program code or discover the wrath of thy coworkers uponest their attempting to fix thy mess.
No. 41: Thou shall pray to the money gods to afford ESRI's next software feature/upgrade.
No. 42: Thou shalt not assign hidden symbol values to thy -ID field without very good reason or thou shall receive a plague from the rest of us.
No. 43: Thou shalt not use abbreviations in thy AML code. Thou shall learn to type efficiently those long ArcInfo commands.
No. 44: Thou shalt not use shapefiles as thy standard data storage.
No. 45: Thou shall not copy a workspace directly onto a CD as a means of data transfer. Thou should insteadeth tar or zip thy workspace before transfer to CD.
No. 46: Thou shall not covet thy neighbour's hardware or software.
No. 47: Thou shalt not annoy the GIS co-ordinator.
No. 48: Thou shalt not modify thy -ID value in INFO or Tables without subsequently
running IDEDIT or thou shalt lose thy changes upon next BUILD or CLEAN.
No. 49: Thou shalt ftp .e00 files as ASCII only or wonder why thy coverage will not import.
No. 50: Thou shalt not upgrade both operating system and ArcInfo at thy same time or thou will most likely suffer the consequences.
No. 51: Thou shalt not update a coverage in ArcInfo, while having same coverage open in ArcView, and wonder why thy ArcView theme become corrupteth.
No. 52: Thou shalt not add attributes to polygons which hath no labels lest thy lose those attributes upon next BUILD or CLEAN. Thou shall use the CREATELABELS command to ensure all polygons are labelled.
No. 53: Thou shall ensure that all polygon coverages be dangle-free.
No. 54: Thou shalt not run CLEAN with large tolerances without taking responsibility for the consequences.
No. 55: Thou shalt not CLEAN back to the same coverage lest thy ESRI gods decide to rain on thy parade and corrupteth thy output.
No. 56: Thou shall work on COPIES of important coverages lest thy ESRI gods decide thou is taking thy work too lightly and needest to repeat all that was done.
No. 57: Thou shalt not use TOPOGRID without setting &FORMAT when you are finished lest PROJECT and PROJECTDEFINE barf.
No. 58: Thou shalt not use PROJECT in non-interactive mode lest you incorrectly define the input coverage (project does not verify in non-interactive mode, see "SUM: automatic Project & Projectdefine")
No. 59: Thou shalt not BUILD, CLEAN, edit and many other functions over the network when using Arc NT lest you desireth many confusing and hard to track error messages.
No. 60: Thou shalt understand DESCRIBE and &DESCRIBE do not worship the
same diety.
No. 61: Thou shalt understand that reserved variables cannot be cleared, only hidden.
No. 62: Thou shalt daily curse not being allowed to use &DO from the commandline but only from within the holy temple of an AML script even though &IF is allowed.
No. 63: Thou shalt give daily thanks to the omniscient beings inhabiting the ESRI-L mailing list.
No. 64: Thou shalt expect blessings to fall like rain when submitting an entreaty to the mailing list. They are recognized by their plentiful "Out Of Office" plumage.
No. 65: Thou shalt always SUM lest your questions be sown on barren ground and not bear fruit.
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