Identifying Features that fall into an AOI then displaying them in a Report

Question

Hi There,

This is what I am trying to accomplish.

-Take a polygon (AOI)

-Run around 50 different features through a Model to see if any land inside the AOI

-Spit out a report which lists the different features by name and the area which lands inside the AOI

This is a process which needs be done many times and must be able to be done with a short turn around time, so it would be best to develop a model which could be run. I don't have a hard time getting the features which land inside the AOI (I simply use the clipping tool with an iterator in model builder) the challenge I'm having is to join all of these features together and create a report which lists all the different features names and areas.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

forestknutsen1 · Answer

I see. Will it be the same inputs every time? Not just some "random" collection of feature classes. Do you need them all in the same feature class in the end or only the report? I think if the input feature classes are static and you need them in one feature class: I would create a "base" empty feature class and use the append tool with field mapping. Then you would still need to do the concatenation. One could then use calculate field tool for this part.

Sorry to say I am not much good with model builder--I would use a python script for it.

Also, if you did go the python route and all you need is the report you can use a search cursor and run over each feature class after the clip. Do the concatenation inside python and output a csv, tsv, txt, or whatever and skip the append and field mapping object...

Anonymous User · Answer

Yes, they are all in different feature classes with different schemas. Each feature class contains information from multiple fields which need to be displayed under a new field (Name) which would need to be created before clipping and would have concatenated fields.

As an example, there could be a cat layer which has Color, Weight and Age attributes and then there could be a Dog layer which has a Breed, Height and Temperament.

Something like this:  (Length replaces Area)

NAME                                                                      Length

Cat - Blue, 6kg, 13 years old                                    33

Dog - Pitbull, 16 inches tak, Aggressive                  64

forestknutsen1 · Answer

Are all of the features in different feature classes? Is that why you can not just export the attribute table? If so, why not merge them together if they have more or less the same schema (field names, etc.). If not you could use field mapping to make sure that "key" fields end up in the same place in the output, e.g. one feature class has a "NAME" field containing the area name but the other one has a "AREA_NAME" field.