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Does anybody know of a good premade ArcGIS tool to iterate over a list of inputs (rasters, shapefiles, etc) and export to pdf/png? Preferably a Toolbox tool that uses the current mxd as a template and possibly allows for symbology and/or legend options. Alternatively, does anyone know of a good stand-alone Python script that could be pointed to a template mxd, take a list of inputs (rasters, etc), maybe zoom to layer options, symbology/legend options, etc.

I am hoping that I don't have to teach myself arcpy.mapping in order to accomplish this, I'm hoping someone has already created something like this. I have a routine that produces 50 raster surfaces, I just want to be able to flip through them without exporting 1 by 1.

The following had some good leads but seemed out of date:

Automating map creation for 50,000 unique routes using ArcGIS Desktop?

Automating entire map production in ArcMap using ArcPy/ArcObjects?

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Yes - the "tool" is called Data Driven Pages.

  1. Decide what your index layer will be. It should have features that can each be used to set an extent for one PDF/image. This is your "list".
  2. Export your DDP-enabled map. There are options to decide whether a PDF will be multi-page or multiple single pages.
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  • Can you display a different raster surface every time? I don't want to show 50 different extents, I want to show 50 different raster surfaces 1 at a time (preferably w/ transparency, symbology, legend). The 50 surfaces happen to show the same geographic extent – bigCow Aug 3 '16 at 21:19
  • Yes - using Page Definition Queries - see gis.stackexchange.com/a/58941/115 - but personally I would do this using ArcPy. – PolyGeo♦ Aug 3 '16 at 21:29
  • The Page Definition queries don't apply to rasters I think. Looks like I might have to hammer it out in arcpy.mapping- I was hoping somebody else already had some good arcpy.mapping routines: Set mxd, add/symbolize data, export, iterate. Thanks for the leads – bigCow Aug 5 '16 at 4:45
  • You're probably right unless your raster data types let you get at a Raster Attribute Table. Not sure if they support page definition queries. – PolyGeo♦ Aug 5 '16 at 5:15

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