ArcGIS 10.3.1 for Desktop includes enhanced functionality and stability improvements.
The following sections summarize changes in different functional areas of ArcGIS. Most sections include links to topics with more information for that specific area of the software.
Geoprocessing
The following are new and improved tools for ArcGIS 10.3.1, arranged by toolbox.
3D Analyst
LAS dataset toolset
Three new geoprocessing tools are available: Classify LAS By Height, LAS Point Statistics By Area, and Locate LAS Points By Proximity.
Visibility toolset
The Viewshed 2 geoprocessing tool that was introduced for the Spatial Analyst extension for ArcGIS 10.3 has been added to the Visibility toolset of the 3D Analyst toolbox.
This tool determines raster surface locations visible to a set of observer features. This tool offers enhanced functionality over the existing surface visibility tools (Observer Points, Visibility, and the original Viewshed) in the following areas:
- This tool performs its calculations using geodesic methods.
- Greatly improved performance for visibility analysis is possible with this tool on systems that have a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) available, provided that your machine has an appropriate NVIDIA graphics card with CUDA compute capability 2.0 or opencl 1.2, and a current driver.
- It optionally accommodates vertical uncertainty in the input surface and produces an observer-visible region relationship table for up to 32 observers (points, multipoints or polylines) which can be related back to the input observer feature class.
Conversion toolbox
The Export To CAD has two new choices for the output_type parameter: DWG_R2013 and DXF_R2013.
Data Management toolbox
You can use the Add Incrementing ID Field to add a database-maintained, unique identifier to an existing table in ALTIBASE. This ID field is required if you will publish the table in a feature service.
When you run the Add Spatial Index tool on geometry or geography feature classes in a SQL Server database or a geodatabase in SQL Server, no input is required to define the spatial grid. If your SQL Server database compatibility level is set to 100 (SQL Server 2008 or 2008R2), grid levels are always set to medium. If your SQL Server database compatibility level is 110 or higher (SQL Server 2012 or later release), an autogrid is used. In both cases, the spatial extent of the index is set to the current extent of the data.
Additional changes to existing tools are as follows:
- Get Raster Properties—For the property_type parameter the ACQUSITIONDATE choice was replaced with ACQUISITIONDATE (the correct spelling).
- Create Pansharpened Raster Dataset—The sensor parameter has a new WorldView-3 choice.
- Make Image Server Layer and Make Mosaic Layer—New processing_template parameter.
- Make Mosaic Layer—The mosaic_operator parameter has a new SUM choice.
- Create Mosaic Dataset—The product_definition parameter has a new WORLDVIEW-3_8BANDS choice.
- Alter Mosaic Dataset Schema—The raster_type_names has a new WorldView-3 choice.
- Generate Tile Cache Tiling Scheme—New lerc_error parameter.
Multidimension toolbox
The Select by Dimension tool has been enhanced to support layers based on multidimensional mosaic datasets and multidimensional image services.
Spatial Analyst toolbox
Surface toolset
Some updates were made to the Viewshed 2 tool for ArcGIS 10.3.1.
- The Output above ground level raster (AGL) option has been fully enabled. The AGL result is a raster where each cell value is the minimum height that must be added to an otherwise nonvisible cell to make it visible by at least one observer.
- The Analysis method parameter was added, allowing you to choose the method by which the visibility will be calculated. This option allows you to trade some accuracy for increased performance.
Geodata
Geodatabases and databases
Starting with ArcGIS 10.3.1, you can connect to read-only databases or geodatabases in Oracle. This is useful if you use Oracle Data Guard; you can move some of the load off your primary database by connecting to one of the standby databases for read-only access, such as sharing data through map services.
You can now register an ALTIBASE, SAP HANA, or Teradata database with ArcGIS for Server and publish data as a feature service. This allows you to share spatial layers through web services. You can also enable editing on the feature service to allow users who connect to the feature service through an application to update the data.
If you load or create new feature classes or tables in an Oracle 12c database from ArcGIS 10.3.1, ArcGIS uses an Oracle identity column for the ObjectID field. The identity attribute is new in Oracle 12c. Using the native database identity column for the ObjectID field improves performance when inserting rows or features.
Extensions
3D Analyst extension
- Improved spatial reference handling, including better support for vertical datum information from LAS files.
- Three new geoprocessing tools are available: Classify LAS By Height, LAS Point Statistics By Area, and Locate LAS Points By Proximity.
- The Viewshed 2 tool was added.
Spatial Analyst extension
For the Image Classification toolbar, a new tool for creating training samples from segmented images was added.
See the Spatial Analyst toolbox section above for details on the changes to Spatial Analyst geoprocessing tools for ArcGIS 10.3.1.