Why ArcView 3.x is Still in Use

Sunday July 20th 2008
Filed Under Current Events 

Despite the introduction of the ArcGIS platform at the 2000 ESRI International User Conference, some GIS shops either partially or exclusively still use ArcView 3.x as a means by which to do GIS.  The original ArcView was introduced in the early 1990s as a graphical interface to view geographic data.  ArcInfo, at the time, was a predominately command line driven application that was not user friendly, especially for the casual user of GIS.  ArcView, over time and through the add functionality of extensions, developed into a program that was capable of more complex spatial analysis and mapping.  The ease of use, the cheaper price, and (at least initially) the availability of the software on Windows instead of UNIX (as was the case until the mid-1990s for ArcInfo) made ArcView a popular choice for entry into the GIS world. 

Even though the last version of ArcView (3.3) was released over six years ago, (ArcView 3.x is now in mature support by ESRI with no retirement date released) ArcView 3.x (as it’s known to distinguish it from ArcGIS ArcView) still remains a popular program among some GIS users.  The continued use of ArcView 3.x can be distilled down into four reasons.

The first is cost.  With a lower entry cost of purchase and no annual maintenance fee, some shops prefer to stick with ArcView 3.  Diane Besser works with the Community Geography Project at Portland State University in Oregon and says, “Schools and non-profits cannot afford ArcGIS – often ArcView can be obtained at minimum to no cost – and, additionally, most do not have the technical infrastructure anyway to support ArcGIS.”

The second reason is legacy.  Many GIS shops have been around for a while and still have legacy ArcView project (.apr) files containing customized Avenue scripting or labeling.  Mike Jenkins, a GIS Analyst with the City of Lakewood in California reports, “We still use ArcView 3.3 for legacy projects that we haven’t converted yet (typically ones with A LOT of hand-laid graphics/annotation).”  The need to convert extensive customization in ArcView 3.x to ArcGIS can be delayed due to a lack of time or resources.    Todd Zagurksi adds, “the wide complement of scripts developed over the years, 3.x offers the ability to perform (a narrowing gap of) tasks that have yet to be written/developed in 9.x.”

The conversion to ArcMap often isn’t worth the effort to convert a map from ArcView that isn’t used very often.  Some GIS shops have literally hundreds or thousands of project files that may be accessed only once in a while.  Diana McCarthy, GIS Specialist with the City of Fullerton in California says, “We’ve got a lot of older maps that we don’t use very often.  Seems you lose a lot of graphics (text, etc.) when converting layouts, and since we don’t use the maps that often it just doesn’t seem worth the time to convert them to AG and then have to spruce them all up again so I just fire up AV when we need an ‘old’ map.”

The third reason provided by ArcView 3.x users is functionality.  Some GIS users believe that ArcView 3.x can perform some GIS tasks better than its ArcGIS ArcView counterpart.  While Jenkins reports that his GIS group does about 95% of their work in ArcGIS, “the ability to select/sort/promote records makes it [ArcView 3.x] a better choice for many editing tasks.” Todd Zagurski from Los Angeles County’s Regional Planning also found that ArcView 3.x “is still a lot quicker than 9.x when performing these types of tasks especially on large data sets.” Jennie Gough with the City of Torrance also uses ArcView 3.x when she has shapefiles that won’t open in ArcGIS “since sometimes I can force them open in ArcView 3.x.”

Nicholas Lindenberg, the manager of the GIS lab at the University of Cape Town in South Africa reports that his students find using ArcView 3.x much easier that ArcGIS, in part due to the smaller installation footprint and freedom from accessing a network license in order to run the software, but also in part due to the change in logic when performing similar tasks in ArcGIS versus ArcView 3.x:

ArcGIS lacks a lot of simple, daily-use  operations (like calculate ID’s, areas, add xy’s etc) off the main  menu system ArcGIS’s query and Visual Basic style calculation tools annoy non-programmers – e.g. to calculate an area in ArcGIS requires  VB precoding, in ArcView 3 it was [Shape].ReturnArea – easy enough to  remember ArcGIS tries to force the use of geodatabases and corporate  GIS approaches, which work poorly with ad-hoc GIS project work. The workflow changes that ESRI chose with ArcGIS are at odds with the  use to which most students and staff tend to put their GIS software -  small scale digitising, simple overlays and spatial joins, and basic  map/layout creation.

The fourth major reason is the “old dog, new tricks” rationale.  Anna Quinan, GIS Coordinator for the City of Hinesville in Georgia says, “I started my GIS career using ArcView and ArcInfo.  That was about 15 years ago.  I know ArcGIS can do all of the tasks I need but I know exactly what and where to go in ArcView and can do it faster than trying to find the same tool in ArcGIS.“  Edgardo David, Senior IT Analyst with the City of Santa Clarita echoes this sentiment stating, “Our GIS core group though now primarily uses ArcGIS, there are occasions however where we seek the simplier but functional Arcview 3x for quick data editing, table analysis and even mapping.  Familiarity in the application is also a factor why I myself still use the old, dependable Arcview 3x.”

It seems as long as ArcView 3.x can work on Windows Operating systems (it is not supported on Vista), it will be a mainstay in many GIS shops.

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Read More

  • ArcView (ArcGIS)
  • Symbol Sets for ArcView 3x and ArcInfo 7x
  • Tutorials for Learning ArcView 3.x
  • ArcView 3.x Resources
  • ArcView 3.x Developer Resources

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    Comments

    13 Responses to “Why ArcView 3.x is Still in Use”

    1. atanas entchev on July 21st, 2008 6:45 am

      The fifth (or the first, in my book) reason is that people don’t like to be forced to buy the cow when all they need is a hamburger.

    2. Lisa on July 22nd, 2008 2:09 pm

      One thing I miss are views. I heard at a conference that ArcGIS 9.3 brings that back….I hope so!

    3. Christian on July 22nd, 2008 3:46 pm

      Don’t forget the surprisingly powerful Avenue scripting language… I must smilingly admit that I keep an install of ArcView for this very reason as I am not a huge fan of the bloated Visual Basic.

    4. S Pewgo on July 23rd, 2008 2:37 am

      The UI in Arcgis is put together with a catapult :-) and is unfriendly and none intuitive in some of its menus

      AV3.3 is fast too setup and can do a huge amount of analysis work

      Av3.3 multiple views and layouts

      AV 3.3 Avenue can now be tagged to the python language, so the possibilities are endless

      Arcgis is very powerful but is unfriendly and that is why I still use Av3.3 for nearly all of my work

    5. Terry on July 23rd, 2008 4:23 am

      Let’s not forget that ArcView 3.x takes less than a half-hour to start up.

    6. Casey on July 23rd, 2008 7:15 am

      While I could agree with the general concept of reason number 3 up there, the second example provided is rather poor. The “simple, daily-use operations” that Mr. Lindenberg say do not exist in ArcGIS, do indeed exist, and are quite accessible. Pretty much everything complained about (add xy, calculate areas, etc) have been in ArcGIS since v9.1/9.2. So while his observations might have been valid several years ago for v8.x, they aren’t limitations with the current software.

    7. Simon Jackson on July 23rd, 2008 2:32 pm

      oooh i do miss those “Segmentation Violations” it used to throw at me.

      Ive still got 3.2 and use it over 9.2 mainly for Geoprocessing with large datasets. 9.x has all sorts of known memory leaks which cause it to fall over.

    8. Diane on July 30th, 2008 8:46 am

      We used ArcView 3.x for years after they came out with the new ArcGIS. One reason was that 8.x didn’t have as much functionality and I simply wasn’t impressed by it. 9.0 solved most of the issues and we gradually started morphing over, but we had a lot of 3.x projects that needed to be upgraded, and many shapefiles that needed to be projected or updated. We made the change gradually and now rarely use 3.x (generally to look at old projects). About a year ago I started automatically updating old 3.x projects even if we rarely use them. I have not found anything that can be done in 3.x that I can’t do in 9.2, but some of the features we are using are only in the ArcInfo/ArcEditor versions, which are quite a bit more expensive. Labelling in Mapplex is so much easier than 3.x that I think it’s shortsighted to remain in ArcView because of that.

    9. Diane on July 30th, 2008 8:55 am

      Pewgo – try morphing some projects into 9.3. You’ll be amazed how quickly you get used to 1 layout = 1 .mxd. It’s really nice to be able to update a map without having to turn on/off a bunch of layers, and the drag and drop feature makes it very easy to move layers between projects or between ArcCatalog and projects. Everything from scripts to labelling to area calculations is easier in 9.3. I found it had a fairly steep learning curve, and I was very slow at first, as I learned new ways of doing things (even though I had been using ArcView for a decade), but now I look back and am sorry I took so long to upgrade. There are so many things I can do in 9.x that I simply couldn’t do in 3.x, or that took me much longer in 3.x. I can put out professional quality maps in a short time without exporting to Illustrator or spending days on one map. ArcCatalog enables me to preview shapefiles easily and quickly. ArcGIS 9.x is a wonderful tool, and once you get used to it you’re going to wonder how you ever worked without it.

    10. Mark on August 4th, 2008 12:15 am

      The “old dog, new tricks” rationale doesn’t even apply according to some college interns that have worked for me. I was amazed one day when one of them walked in and said, “Boy I’m glad to be here.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because here I get to work on ArcView3 and it is so much easier than ArcGIS9. At school we have to learn on ArcGIS9 and ArcGIS9 sucks!”

    11. Marc on August 11th, 2008 1:39 am

      ArcView 3.x just works. It does 95% of what I need in a GIS and it does it well. The other 5% I can achieve using Avenue. I am an independent consultant and can’t justify the expense of moving to ArcGIS when it does not do things that I require any better than ArcView 3.x. Admittedly the Geodatabase is a better data model than the shapefile, but even that limitation can be overcome in ArcView 3.x with a little thought.

    12. Josi on August 11th, 2008 3:24 pm

      Reason 6: Labelling, when all you wanted to do is point and click a few select labels, was fantastic in 3.X. Without buying Maplex, ArcGIS leaves much to be desired on the labelling end of things.

    13. Anna Schatan on August 15th, 2008 7:25 am

      Reason I still like to use ArcView 3.3 is after using it for 18 years, I know what it can do and where to find the tools without searching and relearning everytime I need to do something. I use it to create data or refine the data for the speed. I usually use ArcGIS for map creation and analysis.

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