Hazards of my ArcGIS course

TRANSLATION NOTES: Please read some comments at the end of this post.

Before telling them he was going to develop training in the use of ArcGIS 9.3, with a half enormous mode for the distance, my short time and students’ occupations. Now I leave some conclusions:

About the methodology:

If only everything were so simple. If it were to give training, teach with an example brought from Venezuela and that’s all; but if it’s required to implement the process, people must work.

About the conditions:

It is difficult to implement a project with people that added to their daily activities do not have enough time to accomplish even those tasks.
Perhaps it’s not the case, but it may be more difficult to teach people who do not have much desire to learn.
Interestingly, without further comment.

About the software:

Definitely, Manifold is a great software to implement in an easy way. Now the strange thing, on a two days journey we can have a working system without much return.

Here I leave brief comparisons:

ArcGIS	Manifold
Buy it if you can, if you can not do what you pleases and do not put me into your problems	US $ 300 and don’t think about illegalities
Shaping a Geodatabase … mmm, ArcCatalog, for advanced users, since the creation of a new featureclass to implementation of a domain.	The .map is a geodatabase, create folders, create drawings, apply styles, work!
Bring data from CAD, a full science passing from polygons to featureclass	Bring it to a new drawing, select, copy + paste to the layer, and that’s all.
Topological Clean… after struggling for a while, it’s better to do it in the DGN first.	Apply business tools, and have fun (if you can)
Make a union of polygons in another layer … oh my God!	Select them, copy + paste in the other layer, apply union to the selection, and that’s all.
A layer with lines and points. This can not be done.	Just do it. Is it not used?, Well, it happens when a geometry is from a polygon and is not getting care of its definition … It is put as a point.
Attached to an Excel table … As if we were fools (*) !	Link the table, choose the sheet, then the associated column, and voila!
Working with the kml… if it isn’t one thing, it’s another.	Anything else?
Send to the web… another money (**), another course	File > save as > web page…

The bad: If these creatures are dismissed by the major in a burst of anger, where could they find people who know Manifold?

But there we go, happy days, grumpy days. My children enjoy the journey of about three hours over three weekends. We made just a technical stop for vomiting (***).