topic Re: Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop in Python Questions

Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop

DanielLozier — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 04:32:02 GMT

I have ArcGIS Deskop 10 installed on my machine and I was wondering if it's possible to create a python script that uses some standard Geoprocessing tools and run it outside of ArcGIS?

Specifically I'm trying to run the script from within my eclipse development enviroment (with Pydev installed). I have eclipse setup to use the python installed by ArcGIS. It's path is configured to look in C:\Python26\ArcGIS10.0\lib\site-packages and in there is the Desktop10.pth file with entries for:

C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\bin
C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\arcpy
C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\ArcToolbox\Scripts

If I try to run a script like the following in eclipse:

import arcpy

arcpy.CreateFeatureClass_management("c:/test", "test.shp", "POINT")

I get an error:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'CreateFeatureClass_management'

Re: Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop

JasonScheirer — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:27:32 GMT

Arcpy is case-sensitive, use arcpy.CreateFeatureclass_management

Re: Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop

DanielLozier — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:12:49 GMT

Wow, ESRI needs to update their help documentation then. The arcpy example under the Geoprocessing->The ArcPy site package->Classes->FeatureSet calls the function 'CreateFeatureClass_management'

Thanks, I would have wasted a lot of time on this.

Re: Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop

TrungTran — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:36:23 GMT

Thanks.
This is really a big help. I have wasted a lot of time on this.

Re: Using standard Geoprocessing Tools in python outside of ArcGIS Desktop

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:44:27 GMT

Which is why it is always a good idea to use the online help, since it is updated
http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000002p000000.htm
when little bugs like this are found