By now we assume many of you have made the switch to ArcGIS Pro, or perhaps you’ve committed to doing so sometime this year. If not, you’ll likely be motivated to do so after you attend this year’s ESRIUC or if you take in a local Esri meetup or other GeoGeek event. Recall, ArcGIS Pro is where all of Esri’s future development efforts and innovation will be focused. We’ve looked at Pro extensively in the recent past, for example, this post on the benefits of Pro.
The team at Geospatial Training are always on top of things, in particular, they provide awesome training and learning opportunities on the latest Esri technology and solutions built on the ArcGIS platform. Recently they shared a video from eGIS Associates In this video they share some tips on migrating your MXDs to the newer environment of ArcGIS Pro Projects – be sure to check them out for even more tips and hands-on training opportunities.
Benefits of ArcGIS Pro
So why should you consider migrating to ArcGIS Pro? There are many benefits ArcGIS Pro brings to the table. Here are a few of them according to Esri:
- ArcGIS Pro features a modern ribbon-based user interface, 2D and 3D views, multithreaded geoprocessing, support for multiple maps and layouts, and more (see image below)
- 2D and 3D maps that you create in ArcGIS Pro can easily be shared as web maps and web scenes to ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise
- you can customize ArcGIS Pro in numerous ways to fit your needs. Create Tasks in Pro to streamline repeatable workflows, automate your work with Python and more
- ArcGIS Pro has many capabilities beyond ArcMap including better 3D visualization
- See more HERE

Some notable things about ArcGIS Pro to encourage a switch:
- Pro gets automatically installed and is accessible to your org (see your license Admin)
- License is handled through ArcGIS Administrator
- Think of projects and .aprx files rather than map documents (.mxd)
- Project files can contain multiple maps, scenes (3D) and layouts
- Esri made it easy to migrate and import maps from mxd.
- New look ribbon-based user interface
- see more HERE
See Also: