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The creation of new project schemas requires initial planning. The following is a suggested workflow that may be helpful to get you started.
"Save early, Save often"
1. Define Geometry Types: Point, Line, or Polygon
Geometry can be one of three geometry types: Points, Lines, or Polygons. Review your data requirements and ensure that each feature can be defined as one of these geometry types. For example:
2. Define Categories to organize the features
While not necessary, categories can help organize the features for ease of use and navigation. An example of a category is Utilities which might contain the following features: Water Mains, Hydrants, Powerlines. And the category BaseMap might contain Rivers, Lakes, Parcels, Parks, Road Centerlines.
3. Define domains
A domain is a list of pre-defined values for feature properties. For example, when placing a parcel, you might have a property called Zoning that can be one of the following: Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Educational, Other. Creating a domain list called ParcelZoning would provide these five options as a picklist during feature placement. The contents of a domain list can be defined manually or be queried from a database.
Create the shell definition for each feature, in the "All Users" node (If you do this in the workspace node, then only that workspace will be able to see the features). This is the basic outline of the feature (no attributes, PBS, PBA, sub-features, etc. yet). This is where you define the feature name, geometry type and category is chosen (this is why we created the categories in step 2, we will need them here). Also notice that you can not set up a feature name with a space in it. The space character is a special character in a XML file.
Now navigate to the Properties node under the feature name and add properties. This is not a required step, if the feature does not have any properties, then you do not need to do this. If you do not define properties for the feature, then you will not be able to create PBS or PBA definitions for the feature.
Now edit the symbology properties for the feature. Notice that the list of symbology properties varies by the feature geometry type you chose when creating the feature. Point geometry (text or cell) includes those symbology properties you would expect with text (text style and PBA) or cell (scale, angle, type, name, library). Linear and Polygon geometry contain the same types of properties. Also notice that no matter what the geometry type, you get some basic symbology properties (level, weight, color, etc). This is a good place to add your PBS settings.
You are real close to finishing a basic schema. Repeat steps 4-6 for each feature you want to create.
Now for each feature created add the placement metadata (highlight the feature, right click, and select Add ...... Placement metadata).
Now go down into the User interface and add the command manager items (this is where you can really diverge the definition. If you created different workspaces, one for editing and one for reviewing, then you probably need to do this in the workspace node and not in the "ALL Users" node. This should be a separate topic since there are different routes this can take).
Now create the workspace. This will allow you to store the definitions, resources, etc. needed to run this schema in any of the Geospatial products that use the schema.
Now export your workspace.
To test the workspace, select the workspace node and click on the Run tool. If you are not satisfied with the results, go back and redefine and retest.
** This article is a work in progress **