Access Database bringing in Lines and/or Shapes.

[K-Mart61]

I am working with an MS Access data base that was exported out of Arc GIS 10.3.1.  The DB (*.mdb) contains several tables for Points, Polygons and Lines.  I can bring in any point with no problem, using the X and Y location.  However, the Polygons and Lines, I cannot bring in cause they have no X and Y location..  Is this not possible from an Access DB?  Can I only bring in Points?  Can someone please enlighten me?

Thanks in Advance,

K

[Gary_Braun]

What you are most likely working with is a personal geodatabase, it uses MS Access as it's base but it has a very specific structure to it. You haven't said exactly how you're working with it, but I doubt you'll ever get polygons or linear features out of it if you only connect to it as an Access DB using the ODBC FDO provider.

If you are using a 32-bit version of Map then you should have an ArcGIS Connection provider, try using the PGDb option in there. Note, as of 2017 this is also available in the 64-bit version of map, but it doesn't work very well for polygon features.

[K-Mart61]

Gary.....thanks for responding!

This is NOT a Personnel Geo DB.  It is a Microsoft Access DB (*.mdb). I am also on 64 bit with 64 bit MS Office..... The way I am working with it is we have a project that is a waste disposal site.  The ESRI GIS guys have a lot of information on this site already.  i.e. lots of Points and Polygons.  I have been tasked to create some base maps of the site, so I would like not to have to re create stuff when the items are already created.  My hope was that I could pull all of this data out of the Access DB.  Then once I revise and add new points and polygons I just push my new info back into the DB for updating.  The issue isn't the Point feature it is just the Polygonal Features.  Can Map 3d not do this?  I guess that's wishful thinking on my part  (shrug!!!)

Regards,

K

[Gary_Braun]

Not to doubt you, but a personal geodatabase is a Microsoft Access DB (*.mdb) file. If you open the database in Access and look at the tables, do you see several of them along the lines of GDB_ColumnInfo and GDB_GeomColumns, etc? If so, then it's a personal geodatabase.

[K-Mart61]

Gary.....I re-opened the Access DB, and at the top were eight tables with the GDB_* prefix. (see attached).  The file has about thirty tables overall. Does that help me in this case, can I bring in the Polygons if I have the GDB tables?

Thanks,

K

[Gary_Braun · Accepted solution]

Hi Ken,

This just confirms my suspicion that this is a personal geodatabase file and not a simple ms Access database.

You could go back to what I suggested in my initial response and try using the ArcGIS Connection provider, it may just work for you. There are a couple of other options as well, but they will depend upon your work environment. First, you could ask your GIS team to send you the data in SHP files instead of personal geodatabase then you could just bring those straight in, this is probably the simplest way to go. Alternatively, if you have an Enterprise Geodatabase on your network (either Sql Server or Oracle) then you could do a direct connection to it with the ArcSDE provider, this would save them having to export data for you all the time but would require additional setup on your end.

[K-Mart61]

Gary....I have 64 bit Civil 3D/Map 3D 2016,  We are not on 2017 yet.  So I guess I need to request connecting directly to their Arc SDE DB.  I don't know if I want to go down the road of working with a bunch of SHP files.    All though they do seem to work the best with AutoCAD Map.

Thanks for your Help!