Soil Data Viewer 5.2 Download and Install

Soil Data Viewer 5.2 Platform Requirements
ArcGIS Version Compatibility
Installing Soil Data Viewer 5.2 on a Non-USDA CCE Platform
Obtaining and Preparing Data for Use with Soil Data Viewer 5.2
Soil Data Viewer 5.2 Release Notes

Soil Data Viewer 5.2 Platform Requirements

Although an SDV 5.2 install package error dialog still reads “Some variant of the Windows XP operating system is required in order to install Soil Data Viewer 5.2.”, Soil Data Viewer 5.2 will only install under Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Soil Data Viewer 5.2 will not install under Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

The Microsoft® .NET Framework, version 2.0 must also be installed. You can check the list of programs under “Control Panel: Add or Remove Programs” to determine if this is already installed. Look for “Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0”.

To be able to generate thematic maps, ArcGIS 9.2 or later must be installed. In addition, you must have installed .NET support for ArcGIS when ArcGIS was installed. Please see section ArcGIS Version Compatibility for additional information.

If you have ArcGIS installed but are unsure whether or not .NET support for ArcGIS was also installed, look at the contents of C:\Windows\assembly. If .NET support for ArcGIS was installed, C:\Windows\assembly should contain a number of files (assemblies actually) whose name begins with “ESRI.ArcGIS.”.

If .NET support was not installed when ArcGIS was installed, you can modify your existing installation to include .NET support. Proceed as if you were installing ArcGIS from scratch, but select option “Modify” from the dialog that comes up, and then click “Next”. This will bring up a “Select Features” dialog. If the group named “Applications” is collapsed, click the plus sign to the left of the name to expand that group. From that group, open the item named “.NET Support”, and select “Entire feature will be installed on local hard drive”, and then click “Next”. This will bring up another dialog with the text “Ready to modify the Application” near the top. Click “Next” to then modify your ArcGIS installation.

If you meet all but the ArcGIS requirements, you can still install Soil Data Viewer and run it independent of ArcMap, but output is then limited to a tabular report.

A PDF viewer (such as Adobe® Reader® software) must be installed on your computer in order to view reports created by the Soil Data Viewer application.

ArcGIS Version Compatibility

The install package for versions of Soil Data Viewer prior to 5.2 would install the full GIS enabled version of Soil Data Viewer only for versions of ArcGIS that we had been able to test against prior to the release of that version of Soil Data Viewer. This meant that every time ESRI released a new version of ArcGIS, we needed to release a new version of Soil Data Viewer.

When all other requirements are met, the install package for Soil Data Viewer 5.2 will install the full GIS enabled version for ArcGIS 9.2, or any later version of ArcGIS. Soil Data Viewer 5.2 may or may not actually work with a version of ArcGIS greater than 9.2. For each version of ArcGIS greater than 9.2, a section following this section will be added to indicate whether or not Soil Data Viewer 5.2 is compatible with that version of ArcGIS.

ArcGIS 9.3
In testing Soil Data Viewer 5.2 under ArcGIS 9.3, we found no indication that there are any incompatibilities. If you find otherwise, please contact us with the details at SoilDataViewer@nrcs.usda.gov.

Installing Soil Data Viewer 5.2 on a non-USDA CCE Platform

The Soil Data Viewer 5.2 installation package for non-USDA CCE platforms can be downloaded for free by clicking the link below.

The login used to install Soil Data Viewer 5.2 must have administrator privileges.

After downloading the Soil Data Viewer installation package, double-click it from within Microsoft® Windows Explorer to unzip the contents of that file into any folder. In the folder to which you unzipped the installation package, execute the file named SoilDataViewer5.2.msi. This will start the install process.

The install package actually includes two instances of the Soil Data Viewer application, a GIS enabled instance and a non-GIS enabled or “standalone” instance. When all ArcGIS related prerequisites have been met, the GIS enabled instance is installed. Otherwise, the standalone instance is installed. If you install the standalone instance of Soil Data Viewer, and then later install a compatible version of ArcGIS, you would then have to reinstall Soil Data Viewer in order to install the GIS enabled instance.

The install package will warn you if any requirements have not been met, and will indicate which Soil Data Viewer instance (GIS enabled or standalone), if any, will be installed. You will always be given the opportunity to abort the installation, even when all prerequisites have been met.

If you attempt to install version 5.2 when version 5.0 or 5.1 is currently installed, the installation process will uninstall the 5.0 or 5.1 version before installing the 5.2 version. If you attempt to install version 5.2 when version 5.2 is already installed, the install process will give you the option to uninstall Soil Data Viewer 5.2, without reinstalling it.

The entire installation process typically completes in a couple of minutes.

Soil Data Viewer is automatically installed for all users. There is no option to install Soil Data Viewer for a specific user. The application itself will be placed in C:\Program Files\USDA\Soil Data Viewer 5.

The install process will add a “USDA Applications” program group to your Start Menu, if such a group is not already present. To run Soil Data Viewer independent of ArcMap, select “USDA Applications: Soil Data Viewer: Soil Data Viewer” from the Start Menu. Please see the Online User Guide for instructions on running Soil Data Viewer 5.2 as a plug-in to ArcMap.

The Online User Guides for versions 6.1, 6.0, 5.2, 5.1, and 5.0 are available upon request.

Obtaining and Preparing Data for use with Soil Data Viewer 5.2

The Online User Guide above contains detailed instructions for obtaining and preparing data for use with Soil Data Viewer 5.2.

Soil Data Viewer 5.2 operates on data that can be downloaded from the Web Soil Survey website.

You will also need to have a version of Microsoft Access greater than or equal to Access 2000 installed on your PC. The tabular soil data accessed by Soil Data Viewer must reside in a Microsoft Access SSURGO template database. A request to download data for a survey area can also include a request for a SSURGO template database. You can also download a SSURGO template database independent of a request for survey area data from Web Soil Survey by clicking on the “Start WSS” button, “Download Soils Data” tab, and “Download SSURGO Template Database” bar. Only SSURGO template databases at version 32 or later are compatible with Soil Data Viewer 5.2.

Soil Data Viewer 5.2 Release Notes

Install Package Changes, Fixes, and Enhancements
The install package for versions of Soil Data Viewer prior to 5.2 would install the full GIS enabled version of Soil Data Viewer only for versions of ArcGIS that we had been able to test against prior to the release of that version of Soil Data Viewer. When all other requirements are met, the install package for Soil Data Viewer 5.2 will install the full GIS enabled version for ArcGIS 9.2, or any later version of ArcGIS. Please see section ArcGIS Version Compatibility for additional information.

Application Changes, Fixes, and Enhancements
An ampersand in the pathname of the source map unit polygon Shapefile will no longer cause an exception.