You are here:
Geoprocessing
>
Sharing tools and toolboxes
Sharing a folder as a UNC pathname
To share your tools or data across a LAN, you need to share the folder containing your toolbox or data so it can be accessed using a UNC pathname.
Sharing a folder across the LAN is a common practice. To share a folder, right-click the folder in either ArcCatalog or Windows Explorer, click Properties, click the Sharing tab, and choose Share this Folder, as shown below.
Connecting to an existing UNC pathname
There are three basic ways to access toolboxes and data that are found in a shared folder.
- In ArcCatalog, use the Connect to Folder tool found on the ArcCatalog standard toolbar.
- In ArcCatalog, type in the UNC pathname in the Location combo box as shown below.
- Any time you add data to a model or map document or browse to data in a tool dialog, the Connect to Folder tool is available in the Add Data dialog box.
Learn more about managing folder connections
View the interactive tutorial
Creating documents and models that use UNC pathnames
If you are creating a model or map document that is to be accessed by others on your LAN, data within the model or map document must also be accessible across the LAN. If the data resides on your computer, then you have two basic methods for making your data accessible:
- Use the ToolShare folder structure, place your data in the ToolData folder, and use the Store relative path names option for tools and map documents. With this method, the data is stored relative to the model or map document. When a user on the LAN connects to the ToolShare folder, the data is found relative to the folder. (To get a copy of your model or map document, the user needs to copy the entire ToolShare folder.)
- Share the folder containing the data so it can be accessed using a UNC pathname, then ensure that all references to data in your model or map document use this UNC pathname.
The illustration below shows data in a model that is to be accessed by others on a LAN. The model resides in D:/MyTools and the data resides in E:/MyData. Since the model and data are on different disks, relative pathnames cannot be used. In order for it to be found on the LAN, the data must be a UNC pathname.
Like data in a model, layers in a shared map document must also use UNC pathnames in order for the data to be found on the LAN, as illustrated below.
When you are building your model or map document, you need to add data by browsing or connecting to your shared folder (//cogitator/MyData) as opposed to the local folder (E:/MyData). This way, the UNC pathname is stored rather than an absolute pathname.
All you need to do is share the folder containing the data as described
above, then browse to this folder when adding data. To facilitate browsing, you can add a connection to the shared folder in ArcCatalog by clicking the Connect to Folder tool
and entering the UNC pathname to the shared folder (\\cogitator\MyData in this example). This will add another entry to your ArcCatalog tree, as illustrated below.
Now when you add data, you browse to this UNC pathname and the UNC pathname will be stored in the model or document.