Creating MapDocs from mxd file

Question

New to Python.

I have an mxd file file with three layers and one is a layer of elementary school boundaries.

Goal: Make a pdf doc with a page for each elementary boundary.

1. arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(Counties, "NEW_SELECTION", "Boundary = 'PineCone'")
2. ExportToPDF
3. Next boundary polygon
4. Append PDF
5. Save

My question: Do I need to make a physical file of the elementary boundary layer before I can “SelectLayerByAttribute” for each boundary? Or is there a way to loop through the boundaries by making the selections straight from the mxd file.Below is not complete code, just the thought process.

import arcpy
from arcpy.mapping import *
mapDoc = MapDocument(r"C:temp\boundary.mxd")
pdfElementary = r”C:\Temp\Elem_Bndries”

???
???

for bname in boundaryList
arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(Counties, "NEW_SELECTION", "boundary = bname")
ExportToPDF (mapDoc, pdfElementary, "PAGE_LAYOUT") 
pdfFinalBoundary  = appendPages(pdfElementary)

pdfFinalBoundary .saveAndClose () 
del pdfFinalBoundary 

Answer 1

You can use the below code in the python window to automate the pdf export for data driven pages:

mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")
for pageNum in range(1, mxd.dataDrivenPages.pageCount + 1):
  mxd.dataDrivenPages.currentPageID = pageNum
  pageName=mxd.dataDrivenPages.pageRow.SCHOOLNAME
  arcpy.mapping.ExportTOPDF(mxd, "C:\Temp" + str(pageName) + ".png")
del mxd

Other options:

ExportTOTIFF

Answer 2

To "Make a pdf doc with a page for each elementary boundary" I would recommend an alternative approach of using your layer of elementary boundaries as the index for Data Driven Pages:

Data Driven Pages allow you to quickly and easily create a series of layout pages from a single map document. A feature layer, or index layer, divides the map into sections based on each index feature in the layer and generates one page per index feature.

With a map enabled for Data Driven Pages then you can just Export Map to a multi-page PDF file.