Many changes to the ArcGIS toolbars have taken place in the July update, beginning with the ESA Toolbox. The ESA Tools are no longer in the pull-down menu; instead the red hammer button has returned, which opens a dockable window to view the ESA Tools. This window can be docked in ArcMap or ArcScene, just like the ArcToolbox or ArcCatalog windows.
Along the same lines, the ESA Charts and Reports have also been moved to a dockable window, as shown above. These Charts and Reports display those that are not available from the Hotlink tool (see below), such as Gulf-wide Charts, Company Reports and Custom-built Reports (in GOMsmart).
The importance of these two changes is clear: better accessibility for better efficiency. We look to utilize the dockable window design in many other ways in the near future.
Hotlink Tool
The Hotlink tool (the red lightning bolt) has undergone a major revision. No longer will the layer need to be chosen in the table-of-contents before clicking on a feature in the map. Now clicking in the map (or scene) will identify all of the features and populate a list in the Hotlink window. This should be more intuitive and bring the Hotlink tool in ArcGIS inline with the Hotlink tool in GOMsmart. It will also make available features in a single layer that may not be accessible in ArcMap because of overlapping data, such as certain sand-body reservoirs that stack vertically.
3-D Field View
All of the changes above apply to 3-D as well. ESA Tools are easy to access and the Hotlink tool is able to click through other features in ways that it has not been able to do before. And Field Views now load dynamically so that improvements can be made much more quickly than they had in the past.
