Common Questions

The Districting for ArcGIS add-on simplifies the redrawing of political boundaries that local, state, and federal government agencies use to account for population changes. The add-on transforms what was once a long, manual process into a convenient way of defining police beats; sales territories; voting, school, and fire districts; and many other boundaries.

Once you have the base data established, such as counties or ZIP Codes, you can group the units simply by selecting them in ArcMap. Districting for ArcGIS can help you analyze population densities, housing breakdowns, income and race statistics, and other data.

Districting for ArcGIS also makes it easy to quickly draw various alternative boundaries for consideration.

The Districting for ArcGIS add-on is built on top of Esri's desktop technology and uses both the ArcCatalog and ArcMap applications within ArcInfo, ArcEditor, and ArcView. ArcCatalog is a convenient way to organize and preview districting plans. ArcMap contains an easy-to-use interface for viewing and editing districting plans. To use the Districting for ArcGIS add-on, you need an ArcInfo, ArcEditor, or ArcView license. Districting for ArcGIS supports data in personal geodatabase, shapefile, and coverage formats.

You can download the Districting for ArcGIS add-on for free. The installation is a self-extracting executable and includes sample data.

The Districting for ArcGIS add-on includes documentation through the ArcGIS for Desktop Help menu that provides help on specific topics, as well as a comprehensive tutorial to guide new users through the entire districting process. To access the help section and the tutorial, you must first install the Districting for ArcGIS software. The help file and the tutorial will then be available through the ArcGIS for Desktop Help tab.

Technical support is not available for free add-ons. However, you may send inquiries to districting@esri.com or visit the Districting for ArcGIS discussion forum to benefit from the experience and expertise of fellow professionals in the GIS community.

No. Esri has decided not to freely distribute the source code for the Districting for ArcGIS add-on, so it can't be customized at this time.

No, the Districting for ArcGIS add-on is designed so that users interactively assign geographic units to districts.

Verify that your user login is an administrator. When installing the Districting for ArcGIS add-on, the current login user needs to be an administrator because the installation program is adding information to the Windows registry.

You must turn on the Districting for ArcGIS add-on in ArcMap by going to Tools Extensions. Check the Districting box and click Close. Toggle the Districting toolbar (either go through View Toolbars or right-click in the toolbars region near the top of the ArcMap window).

The Districting for ArcGIS add-on requires that the values for the field be unique in both the source geography and source attribute datasets. Otherwise, the field will not appear in the key field drop-down list.

Candidates for the join key field must either be integers (including short, long, and small) or strings. Fields set as double will not be listed as candidates.

No. At this time, the Districting for ArcGIS add-on only works with polygon data.

Yes, plans created in ArcGIS 8.3 may be used in 9 and newer versions of Districting for ArcGIS.

Deleting the GxObjFactCache.dat file from C:\Documents and Settings\(user profile)\Application Data\Esri\ArcCatalog fixes this problem. The file will automatically be re-created by ArcGIS the next time the application is used.

No, the Districting for ArcGIS add-on currently only works with an English-language operating system.

For an average machine (512 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor), up to 3,000 districts can be created for a plan. To ensure best performance, additional hardware may be required to create a plan that has more than 3,000 districts.

For an average machine (512 MB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor), up to 5,000 source geography units can be used to create a plan. To ensure best performance, additional hardware may be required to create a plan that has more than 5,000 source geography units.