topic Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

dgray — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 21:35:58 GMT

Hello,

I want to know if there's a way to perform a spatial join in ArcGIS Pro (or using Python) between Polygon A and B (B being the target) where the Polygon A that shares the largest overlap in area with the target is the one that gets joined. I saw that there is a tool for ArcMap, but if I'm using ArcGIS Pro, how do I accomplish this? My issue is if I'm joining polygons with different shapes and centre points, many other join type criteria just don't do a correct match.

Intersect sometimes selects an adjacent polygon whose boundary intersects the target rather than the one that overlaps the target the most. Have Their Center In won't work if the join polygon has a completely different centre point than the target. I am having trouble making correct join matches in this situation.

Please help!

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

KoryKramer — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 14:29:37 GMT

Did you try the tool in Pro?

I imported the toolbox:

The tool opens...

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

dgray — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:49:23 GMT

Oh nice, I didn't actually know the tool even worked in Pro since it was developed for ArcMap. I tested it and it doesn't appear to complete because of syntax errors. See message below.

I guess the script needs some kind of adjusting for Pro?

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

KoryKramer — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:54:50 GMT

Oh, that would be good if that's the only change that needs to be made (that'll be a Python 2 to Python 3 thing).

Try adding the parentheses and saving:

I'm not entirely sure if you would need to close Pro and re-open, but give that a go.

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

DrewFlater — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 18:43:06 GMT

Dianne Gray‌ Kory Kramer‌ The Spatial Join - Largest Overlap download has been updated to remove that ridiculous print at the end.

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

dgray — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 23:00:18 GMT

Hi Drew, I have another problem with this tool. I just tried running it using both Keep All Features checked and unchecked:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "E:\Library\GIS DATA\SCRIPTS\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap\Scripts\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap.py", line 85, in <module>
SpatialJoinLargestOverlap(target_features, join_features, out_fc, keep_all, spatial_rel)
File "E:\Library\GIS DATA\SCRIPTS\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap\Scripts\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap.py", line 41, in SpatialJoinLargestOverlap
for row in scur:
RuntimeError: An invalid SQL statement was used.
Failed to execute (SpatialJoinLargestOverlap).

What could be causing this problem? I thought it could be the dataset (I was using one that had over 200,000 records, but I created a subset of that that's only 2100 items, and it still fails to run).

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

AlfiyanMustaqim — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 04:13:44 GMT

Maybe I have the same case

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\GIS Studio\Spatial-Join_Largest-Overlap\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap\Scripts\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap.py", line 85, in <module>
SpatialJoinLargestOverlap(target_features, join_features, out_fc, keep_all, spatial_rel)
File "D:\GIS Studio\Spatial-Join_Largest-Overlap\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap\Scripts\SpatialJoinLargestOverlap.py", line 73, in SpatialJoinLargestOverlap

arcpy.management.JoinField(out_fc, "JOIN_FID", join_features, arcpy.Describe(join_features).OIDFieldName, joinfields)
File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro\Resources\ArcPy\arcpy\management.py", line 8015, in JoinField
raise e
File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro\Resources\ArcPy\arcpy\management.py", line 8012, in JoinField
retval = convertArcObjectToPythonObject(gp.JoinField_management(*gp_fixargs((in_data, in_field, join_table, join_field, fields), True)))
File "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro\Resources\ArcPy\arcpy\geoprocessing\_base.py", line 512, in <lambda>
return lambda *args: val(*gp_fixargs(args, True))
arcgisscripting.ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.
ERROR 000308: Invalid field type
Failed to execute (JoinField).

I used 106.000 records

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

dgray — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 15:46:39 GMT

Hi AlfiyanMustaqim,

I had found a solution to essentially perform a Select by Location using Largest Overlap. Please see

https://community.esri.com/t5/python-questions/select-by-location-largest-overlap/m-p/1054383#M61026

I hope this helps you accomplish what you set out to do.

Re: Spatial Join - Largest Overlap - ArcGIS Pro

RileyAnderson — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 20:01:52 GMT

As of recent years, you can use Spatial Join in Pro with the method Largest Overlap. The script referenced in this forum is no longer supported due to the built-in Pro functionality. When doing the spatial join, make sure both layers have the same projection or the join assignment will be off. In my experience and others, if the projections weren't exactly the same, the join was occurring with a neighboring feature or smallest overlapping feature instead of largest.