.NET ArcObjects Intersect

Question

All,

I'm automating a process for some workmates involving 3 geoprocessing commands.  I'm using ArcObjects C#.  I'm having some difficulties getting the Intersect object to like what I'm passing it for in_features.  Documentation is scarce and I can't find any examples.  The input is of type object, which is horribly unhelpful, since if you pass it the apparently wrong type of object the thing just fails without any explanation.

If someone has a .NET example of using ESRI.ArcGIS.AnalysisTools.Intersect please post your code.  This repeated poke and hope approach is draining my time and patience.

Many thanks.

CaleBerkey · Answer

Thanks Ken, much appreciated.

While I haven't figured out exactly why my program was failing, I discovered what was causing it to fail.  For whatever reason, ArcObjects wouldn't recognize the intersect output filesystem location.  It's a network drive and just couldn't get there.  When repointing the program to a local geodatabase, the intersect worked as advertised, and in that case I used a simple semicolon delimited path string.

Unfortunately, since the routine was not reporting a useful error, it took many attempts of trial and error, altering little bits as I went, to discover this.  Why the dissolve and buffer could be output to the network but not the intersects is beyond me, but at least I have a suitable workaround for my coworkers for now.

kenbuja · Answer

What I often do when I write a geoprocessing routine is to first run the tool in ArcMap and examine the results message. This shows the syntax of the parameters that expected by the tool.

When you run the Intersect tool, it's expecting several different input feature layers (test1.shp and test2.shp, for example) and their rankings (nothing, in this case), and an output (C:\ArcGIS\Default.gdb	est_Intersect). Here's what the Executing message reports for a test run:

"test1 #; test2 #" C:\ArcGIS\Default.gdb	est_Intersect All # INPUT

So for the code, you would set in_features to "test1 #; test2 #". All you have to do is supply the names of the dataset and a number for the ranking (or a # if ranking doesn't matter), separated by a semicolon.

dim Inter as New ESRI.ArcGIS.AnalysisTools.Intersect

Inter.in_features =  "test1 #; test2 #"
Inter.out_feature_class = "C:\ArcGIS\Default.gdb	est_Intersect"

CaleBerkey · Answer

Thanks all.

The problem I'm having compared to the samples and documentation you suggest is that I want to intersect two feature classes, not just one.  The examples demonstrate how to perform a given geoprocessing task against only one feature class, in which case the pathname or the feat class interface is passed into the routine.  I can't find any examples of how to pass in multiple feature classes for the intersect, and my various attempts are failing.  I've tried variations on semicolon-delimited pathnames, pathnames wrapped in single quotes, etc., and the routine simply fails when executing.

I'd really love some example code of someone passing multiple feature classes into a geoprocessing routine because I'm obviously not doing what the object wants me to do, and unfortunately, an input type of 'object' is of absolutely no help in determining what to pass in.