From the course: Drone Analysis with Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online

What is the folder structure of every Drone2Map project?

From the course: Drone Analysis with Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online

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What is the folder structure of every Drone2Map project?

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- [Instructor] The file and folder structure in Drone2Map is complicated, so let's make sure you know how to navigate the complexity. Now, in the lower portion of the manage pane on the right, you'll see a tab that's called Catalog, and that's what we're on right now. If you accidentally close this pane here with clicking the X, you can get back to it from the main ribbon in the Layers group and you can click on Catalog. So here we are back in that place. So let's explore it together. Here, I'm going to click on the little arrow to expand Maps. Now we see we have two different maps. We have a 2D map and a 3D map, and those are the tabs that you have here in your data view. Under Toolboxes, if we expand that, we have a custom toolbox. Now, this is rarely used in Drone2Map, but sometimes used in ArcGIS Pro. Now under Databases, as we expand that, notice that you have a geodatabase. This was created when you created your project, and that's why it is named the same name that you gave your project. Now when we hover over it, we can see where the geodatabase is located, in this case, where it's at on the hard drive. And if you click the link in the pop-up, it launches Windows File folder Explorer for you where those files and folders are located. Notice here you have several folders which are consistent with every Drone2Map project, including a .d2mx file, which is your project file. Now I just want to highlight two folders now. Any products that you build in Drone2Map will go in the Products folder, and any reports that you generate will go here in the Reports folder. So let's go back to Drone2Map. Now here in the geodatabase, we have a self-contained relational structure that houses the vector points, lines, and polygons that are created in the project. Here, I've expanded the project geodatabase and you can see that we have three layers in there, Control points, Flight Lines, and Image Centers. Notice they're also in the Contents pane here on the left for your screen. Now, even though we have the layer for Control points, we haven't set any for the project yet, but we'll discuss that later. However, we do have the image Centers in the data view for the 2D map, right here. And you can see the Flight Line that the drone took between Image Centers. Now back in Catalog, we have some other options. We have Styles, which are rarely adjusted in Drone2Map, but are available for different symbologies you might like to use. Then under Folders here, when I expand this and look at Chapter01, notice that we have the same kind of file folder structure that we had in Windows earlier. It is good practice that if you're moving files around related to Drone2Map, that you do everything here in the Catalog so that if any file dependencies exist, they're correctly assigned by the software. The last folder in the Catalog pane are Locators, and these house, the ArcGIS World locator for geocoding or for location lookups, and a predefined XY locator. Both of these are also rarely used in Drone2Map, but are still here just like they are in ArcGIS Pro.

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