07/14/2020
Hello everyone,
I know many of us are attending the Esri UC virtually this week. But in case you missed it, ArcGIS Pro 2.6 is scheduled for release soon after the UC is completed. This new version of ArcGIS Pro is filled with many improvements that a lot of us have been asking for.
So in my typical what's new posts, I will list a few that I think will be of big interest to the majority of users.
Graphics and Graphic text can now be added to Maps and Scenes. This has been a long time in coming and will make creating exhibits and such much easier in Pro.
You can now disable and enable editing similar to starting and stopping editing in ArcMap. Up until this new release, editing was always enabled in ArcGIS Pro. There was no requirement to start and stop editing. This could be dangerous and lead to unintended edits to your data.
Project recovery has been added. This allows ArcGIS Pro to recover previous versions of projects if your session of ArcGIS Pro stops unexpectedly similar to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
Several commonly used tools such as Select by Attribute, Select by Location, and Calculate Field tools now run in their own floating window instead of being limited to the Geoprocessing pane. This increased their responsiveness and allows them to run while you are running other geoprocessing tools. I do have a concern that this will require even more computer resources to work successfully. So if your computer is at the lower end of the hardware spectrum, you might not find this improvement much of one.
Map Series can now use the bookmarks in a map to generate a series/map book in addition to using a standard index layer.
A new data source editor has been added. This allows you to quickly and easily reassign data sources for layers, tables, or web services used throughout the open project. This makes managing sources across an entire project with many maps, scenes, layouts, and connections much easier and efficient.
A new Trace Network has been introduced. It allows you to perform network traces to verify connectivity and more similar to the old geometric network. The new Trace Network does not have anywhere near the capability of the Utility Network but should be much easier to implement especially if you are already using the geometric network.
Much greater integration with BIM and AutoCAD Civil3D has been added. This new version will allow you to connect to Autodesk BIM 360 and displace data directly from it or even download data to a local source. ArcGIS Pro 2.6 will also allow you to displace native Civil3D objects directly in a map or scene.
Support for new Voxel layers. This allows you to display data in a 3D scene as volume metric visualizations.
You can create pyramids for LiDAR LAS files to improve performance.
Report Builder in ArcGIS Pro now supports the inclusion of Charts and Graphs along with increased graphics support.
Charts in ArcGIS Pro now have improved data selection capability as well as improved visualization controls.
These are just some of the major improvements coming in ArcGIS Pro 2.6 that I think most users will get the most benefit from. But this is just a fraction of the new capabilities of this new release which is scheduled to come out sometime this month.
For a more thorough listing of the new capabilities that are coming in ArcGIS Pro 2.6 check out this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf8kJLxJJRU.
While I am very excited about this new upcoming release, I have not personally been able to test it yet. So as with any new release or update, I encourage you to test it before you put it into your primary production workflows. I am working to get a copy for testing myself and so I can update my soon to be released new ArcGIS Pro book to this new version.
This video highlights new functionality and major updates in the new ArcGIS Pro 2.6 release, available July 2020. To learn more about what's new, visit our w...
