Model Builder Intersect Tool

Question

I am working with a model in Arc Pro. I am working with data that has different park boundaries within the park system. My goal is to create an output that shows only the intersecting areas between park boundaries and that has both of the park names in the attribute table.

The issue I am running into has to do with the intersect tool. When I run all of the tools outside model builder it works great. However, in model builder, when I run the intersect tool, it produces an output that is the same as the input...same amount of features and the visual shows the entire park units, not just the intersecting areas.

Screenshot 2025-01-02 154837.png

LindaGreen · Answer

When you run your file outside of modelbuilder, what are the inputs into your Intersect?

If you want to get the intersection of two files, you need two inputs into the intersect. Right now your model only has one input (Appended Boundaries), so the output of your intersect is just going to be a copy of that dataset.

I'm a little confused by the model in general though. Right now it looks like it makes a geodatabase, creates  a feature dataset, creates a blank feature class inside that feature dataset, adds some fields to the blank feature class, and then appends that blank feature class to the NPS boundary file. If I'm interpreting that correctly, the blank feature dataset created by the model has no data/rows, so there's nothing to append to the NPS data. You might be adding fields to the NPS data depending on how the append is set up, but I'm not sure what else it's doing.

This doesn't cover all the geodatabase/file creation steps that you have, but generally the image below is what I think you want the intersect part of your model to look like, with two (non-blank) input layers going into the Intersect tool. This will give you the area where the NPS boundaries and the other park boundaries overlap, and the output will have all of the fields from both inputs.

If this is working outside ModelBuilder, you must have your other park boundaries set up already? If you can use that file directly in ModelBuilder, great, problem solved! If you need Modelbuilder to create a new geodatabase to house that boundary data for some reason, you could append your other park boundaries into the blank "Boundary" dataset (thus giving it some records) instead of into the NPS dataset, and then run the intersect with the "Boundary" and "nps_boundary" as the inputs.

Please forgive me if I've completely misinterpreted! If so, you might need to post more of the info that others have suggested so that someone can look at it more closely.

David_McRitchie · Answer

Hey Jessica,

One step I usually use that might help here is to export a model of your process, including everything before the intersect process. Then create a new model and add this model to it, and feed it into the intersect process.

This will let us know if something is going wrong with the intersect process, perhaps from a certain input variable, or with the wider model.

Hope that helps,

David

Hornbydd · Answer

You need to edit your question and include a screen shot of how you set up the intersect tool itself, i.e what are the parameter settings? As it stands it is difficult to answer your question.