VertiGIS Studio Printing Engine is an innovative Web GIS solution extending the ArcGIS platform. With VertiGIS Studio Printing Engine you have the possibility to create high-quality print outputs in different output formats. The desired print extent can be rotated and aligned at will and can be printed with predefined or arbitrary scales. In addition to the choice of a layout template, the user has the possibility to choose a resolution. The layout template can be designed with VertiGIS Printing Layout Designer. The VertiGIS Printing Layout Designer is available as ArcGIS Pro Add-in and offers a range of map elements which can be inserted in the layout, like:

•North arrow

•Function fields (e.g. Date, User, Project Title)

•Free text and graphic elements

•Detail maps of selected features

•Logo fields

 

Technical background

VertiGIS Studio Printing Engine is a geoprocessing service based on python using arcpy.mp, that can be published on ArcGIS Server. Service parameters are the same as ESRI default printing service but adds some more optional parameters to support additional maps, serial maps, index maps or cover sheet maps.

By leaning on ESRI default parameters, the service can be used with these default capabilities by portal web apps and portal map viewer. To use the additional functions, the client needs to prepare the data in a defined JSON format to address the service properly.

 

Actually, the service supports three tasks:

•VertiGIS_PrintTask
Creates the print according to the requested parameters

•GetLayoutInfo
Provides information about the template, that allows the client to show the map frames in the browser

•GetIndexInfo
Calculates and delivers the map frame rectangles that cover the index line

Advantages

The advantage of this approach is that all capabilities of web maps for export and arcpy.mp concerning map and layout manipulation can be used. As python with arcpy.mp is also used in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Runtime (as GeoProcessing package) it is easy to adopt the actual development for desktop and mobile usage. That also means the we achieve plots from a web client with the same quality as from desktop, including vector data, vector tiles, markups etc.

•Fully Esri compliant client and server on latest ArcGIS API for JavaScript, any ArcGIS Enterprise WebTask client and ArcGIS Pro based technology

•Extensibility through ArcPy as common language

•Scalable inside ArcGIS Enterprise

•Fully integrated to ArcGIS Enterprise Web-GIS pattern including Security

•Potentially all ArcGIS Pro output capabilities (e.g. Geo-PDF, scenes,...) on the web

Administration concept

•Layout administration via ArcGIS Pro Add-In. Use default ArcGIS Pro layout options and extend by additional functions with VertiGIS Printing Layout Designer

•Reference to layouts provided through Web Task publishing

•Usage of service / Web Task is administered using ArcGIS Enterprise

•Usage and functionality presented to user are configured in the WebOffice project configuration (.xml). So with WebOffice parametrization is done in WebOffice author connected to ArcGIS Pro.