Toggling layers on and off and exporting to PDF using ArcPy with ArcMap

Question

I am trying to create a map book that show the same extent with different layers displayed in ArcGIS 10.8 and ArcPy (I'm also on Windows 10 and a government computer which I cannot add programs to). I am not a coder, I'm a soil conservationist. I am using this code from Making Map Book of pages with same area shown but different layers turned on/off but find that it creates the maps with all layers minus 1. Meaning the first map in my example code will have all three layers displayed, the second will have two layers displayed, and the last will have one layer displayed.

Since I'm making 18 maps at once, this is basically crashing my program each time and is not producing what I am looking for. I would like to toggle the layer on, export the map, and toggle the layer off. At which point it would move on to the next layer on, export map, layer off again. And so on for all 18 layers.

Any ideas how to fix my issue?

import arcpy, os

#Specify output path and final output PDF
outPath = r'C:\Users\Outputs'
finalPdf = arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate(outPath + 'WetlandSupportdocs.pdf')
 
#Specify the map document and the data frame
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r'C:\Users\Outputs\test2.mxd')
df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd, 'Layers')[0]
 
#Select a tract using the TRACTNBR attribute and zoom to selected
cluLayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, 'clu_a_ny067', df)[0]
arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(cluLayer, "NEW_SELECTION", '"TRACTNBR" IN (1470)')
df.zoomToSelectedFeatures()
 
#Turn on visibility for each theme and export the page
lyrList = ['soilmu_a_ny067', 'hydric_percent_a_ny067', 'soilsf_p_ny067']
for lyrName in lyrList:
     lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyrName, df)[0]
     lyr.visible = True
  
     #Export each theme to a temporary PDF and append to the final PDF
     tmpPdf = outPath + lyrName + '_temp.pdf'
     if os.path.exists(tmpPdf):
          os.remove(tmpPdf)
     arcpy.mapping.ExportToPDF(mxd, tmpPdf)
     finalPdf.appendPages(tmpPdf)
 
     #Turn off layer visibility and clean up for next pass through the loop
     lyr.visible = False
     del lyr, tmpPdf
del mxd, df, finalPdf

Answer 1

I think the problem was with your file-path strings (check the docs for more info). See os.path.join. I also added a few print statements to your script to make it a bit more readable from the ArcMap Python window:

import arcpy, os

# Specify output path and final output PDF
outPath = r'C:\Temp'
pdfPath = os.path.join(outPath, 'WetlandSupportdocs.pdf')
if os.path.exists(pdfPath):
     os.remove(pdfPath)
finalPdf = arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate(pdfPath)

# Specify the map document and the data frame
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r'C:\Temp\Test.mxd')
# mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r'current')
df = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd, 'Layers')[0]
 
# Select a tract using the TRACTNBR attribute and zoom to selected
# cluLayer = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, 'clu_a_ny067', df)[0]
# arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management(cluLayer, "NEW_SELECTION", '"TRACTNBR" IN (1470)')
# df.zoomToSelectedFeatures()
 
# Turn on visibility for each theme and export the page
lyrList = ['soilmu_a_ny067', 'hydric_percent_a_ny067', 'soilsf_p_ny067']

# Don't assume the layers are turned off...Turn them off first.
print("First, turn off all the layers")
for lyrName in lyrList:
     lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyrName, df)[0]
     lyr.visible = False
     print("\tSet layer-visibility for '" + lyr.name + "' to " + str(lyr.visible))

print("Second, export to PDF")
for lyrName in lyrList:
     print("---")
     lyr = arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, lyrName, df)[0]
     lyr.visible = True
     print("\tSet layer-visibility for '" + lyr.name + "' to " + str(lyr.visible))
 
     #Export each theme to a temporary PDF and append to the final PDF
     tmpPdf = os.path.join(outPath, lyrName + '_temp.pdf')
     if os.path.exists(tmpPdf):
          os.remove(tmpPdf)
     arcpy.mapping.ExportToPDF(mxd, tmpPdf)
     print("\tPDF Exported to following path: " + tmpPdf)
     finalPdf.appendPages(tmpPdf)
 
     #Turn off layer visibility and clean up for next pass through the loop
     lyr.visible = False
     print("\tSet layer-visibility for '" + lyr.name + "' to " + str(lyr.visible))
     del lyr, tmpPdf

finalPdf.saveAndClose()
del mxd, df, finalPdf

Lastly, without more info on the arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management layer, it is not possible to confirm your definiton query is correct. Here is a screenshot of completed script and the output PDF:

Edit: After reviewing this again, I see the problem (almost certainly with the filepaths). The path inside arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate() was being built as outPath + 'WetlandSupportdocs.pdf'

e.g.

outPath = r'C:\Users\Outputs'
finalPdf = arcpy.mapping.PDFDocumentCreate(outPath + 'WetlandSupportdocs.pdf')

Which translates to C:\Users\OutputsWetlandSupportdocs.pdf as your PDF path. (Note the absence of slash between Outputs and WetlandSupportdocs.pdf).