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How to install the Hillshade Tools

September 21 2008 | 8 comments
Categories: Cartographic Effects, Symbology

I have seen the question "Swiss Hillshade Tool Error question..."in the http://mappingcentre.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=ask.answers&q=394&ESRISessionID=ufJtzngf6TUgYQ5wo%5FnNT35v%5Fd7vcSMe%2DnbbSBLvi3raW4o%5FcVGejieC3FAVTeeItA%3D%3D

So I downloaded the hillshade tools at that address. But I do not know how to install it correctlly. Do I just put it in the install folder?

Mapping Center Answer:

Actually, it easier than that! Here are the steps:

On the ArcGIS Resources page, click on the link for the Hillshade Tools, accept the Software License Agreement, and save the .zip file to a location on your computer.
Unzip the file to a directory that you want to store the toolbox in -- remember the path to that directory.
Start ArcMap.
In the ArcToolbox window, right click the word at the top, "ArcToolbox". (If the ArcToolbox window is not showing, click the red toolbox on the top bar menu to show it.)
Click "Add Toolbox...".
Navigate to the directory where you unzipped the hillshade_tools.zip and click "Open".

You are now ready to use the tools. There are two of them -- the Swiss Hillshade model, and the MDOW (Multi-directional Oblique Weighting model). Both are well documented in the tool itself so if you need additional information about the tools, click on the "Tool Help" button that appears at the bottom right of the tool when you open it.

Attachment: Hillshade tools .zip file

thank you posted by tian yuan on Sep 24 2008 12:42AM

You answer is very clear, thank you very much.

Where the two hillshade tools? posted by Simon Willis on Sep 25 2008 8:21AM

I downloaded the hillshade zip file and extracted it to a folder. I added the Hillshade_Tools.tbx to arctoolbox but there are no tools in it. Has anyone had any luck adding this tool? Am I missing something? Any help would be appreciated.

They are there posted by Aileen Buckley on Sep 25 2008 9:09PM

I tested this and had no probelme. Note that you will not find individual models listed if you use your Windows Explorer to browse the directory. They WILL show up in the toolset in ArcTools when you add it to ArcToolbox. Please let me know if this problem persists.

Data type error posted by Charlotte Peters on Oct 9 2008 12:51PM

I've tried using the hillshade tools, but I keep getting "Data type error: Data type is not a string value". Is it expecting the DEM values to be string values? I didn't see any way to identify what was causing the error. I'm using 9.2.

toolbox is empty posted by Cheryl Johnson on Nov 3 2008 2:23PM

I added the Hillshade Tools toolbox, but there are no tools. I'm looking at it in ArcToolbox.

Try it again - or download the attachment posted by Aileen Buckley on Nov 14 2008 4:45PM

We are not quite sure what the problem is so I reposted the zip file to our ArcGIS Resources -> Tools, Models and Scripts page. I also added the .zip file as an attachment to the original email above. Hopefully one of these two options will give you the full toolbox! Sorry for any inconvenience!

Hillshade tools for 9.3 keep crashing posted by Emily Garding on Sep 2 2009 3:25PM

I have tried to use the hillshade tool twice in a row, both times it crashes ArcCatalog when it seems to be near the end of the process....I saved an error report to see if I could learn anything about the error but I don't know how to open it.

Some ideas for raster processing posted by Aileen Buckley on Aug 18 2010 11:36AM

We have found that raster processing sometimes fails if: 1) there are spaces in the path names, and 2) the path names are too long. Perhaps you could try to rerun the tool using directories that have no spaces in the name and have a short path.

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