Spaced Out ::

OK, so I seem to be getting a bit frustrated with ArcMap at the moment. Perhaps it’s because I use it a fair bit and it really is very good at pulling data together to play with and produce output. Anyway, I was delivering a class on planetary GIS to 2nd year specialists at Kingston and was showing them how to open MOLA DEM data, add projection information and then, using Spatial Analyst, produce some relief shaded images. I also got them to further explore aspect and slope images as well. I then got them digitising geological landforms in order to produce some rudimentary maps. All very good except that well I loaded the Spatial Analyst toolbar all the options were greyed out.

I should say I am partly to blame here because I have twice before come across this and fixed it after a little head scratching. But I had forgetton yet again. Even if you haven’t purchased any of the extensions ESRI sell, they are installed, but not enabled by default. So yes you can load the Spatial Analyst toolbar, but unless you enable from the Tools->Extensions menu then it won’t work. Simple enough to solve but why can’t I get a sensible error message??