ArcGIS and Tiled Maps
Overview
You can design beautiful maps in ArcGIS For Desktop. You can ship the MXD file off to ArcGIS For Server to turn them into web maps.
But what if you want to create a map in ArcMap and then turn it into a map displayed in some less expensive web server?
- Create map in ArcMap
- Generate tile package
- Copy tile package to server
- Server can send tiles to browsers for use as a map layer (it can be transparent so it can function as a layer on top another base map).
The only problem is unpacking the ESRI format TPK down into PNG or JPG files. Refer to TPK section below. I see references in the ArcGIS Python docs on storing the tiles in "exploded" form. I think that might be the path to take for using another server.
For now I will just consider using them as they were intended, in ESRI software.
Note that you can directly add a TPK file to ArcMap and use it there. Handy for testing and previewing.
What is a tile package?
ESRI help page: About tile packages
What does "Enable ArcGIS Runtime Tools" mean?
What does it mean "Automatically select location" vs "Use user specified location"?
TPK file contents
It is a zip file, which is what I expected. Inside the zip are "bundle" files which are in "Compact cache" format.
Unzipped...
esriinfo/item.pkinfo
esriinfo/iteminfo.xml
esriinfo/thumbnail/thumbnail.png
v101/Web Mercator Map/conf.cdi
v101/Web Mercator Map/conf.xml
_alllayers/L00/R0000C0000.bundle
_alllayers/L00/R0000C0000.bundlx
_alllayers/L01/R0000C0000.bundle
_alllayers/L01/R0000C0000.bundlx
.
.
.
v101/Web Mercator Map.lyr
Contents of conf.xml: File:Conf.xml - basically metadata including descriptions of the tile sets in the file.
