Attribute Transfer Tool Selection Chip Respect Field Mapping

[cmathers]

With the new layer selection chip in the Attribute Transfer tool the issue of overlapping layers has been resolved but the chip could be improved by having it respect the settings in the tool itself. If I have two overlapping features in different layers and click on the overlapping area the chip requires me to select the source feature in spite of the tool already knowing which layer to look in for a source feature. What should be a two click process is now five. Click the source, click the chip, click the layer, click the check mark, click the target. 

[Melissa_B]

Just ran into this myself, but the behavior of the tool appears to be bugged. If you select a polygon that's from the source feature class and then select the overlapping polygon from the target feature class, the popup comes up. But if you miss the popup because you're moving fast (or ignore it because why should you have to clarify when there's already a source and target mapping set up) and then select the next feature in the source feature class, the data in that feature is overwritten by the data in the last clicked source feature. That doesn't seem like expected behavior when you've specified a "source" and "target". I use the tool pretty often and I don't remember any previous version overwriting the data of source features.  This behavior has caused me to lose data because it took a while for me to realize that it was overwriting source feature data while I was doing what used to be a pretty routine data transfer.

Edit: Just tested on another computer with 3.4.3 and it also would overwrite data amongst source data features.  I guess I never noticed because in my previous workflow, the data was transferred to the target before I selected the next source.  Still doesn't seem like expected behavior and isn't in any of the documentation for the tool that I can find.

[JenniferCadkin]

Please see my comment here  for information on Transfer Attributes and Field Mapping behavior.

[Scott_Harris]

@Melissa_B @cmathers 

I'm sure you are aware, but I wanted to point this out to any others that are reading: If you don't want to accidentally transfer attributes from a source layer to itself you can clear the field mapping that exists for that layer as a target and a source:

[Scott_Harris]

@cmathers You mentioned that you are seeing source features show up in the chip. You can prevent this by turning off the Editability of the source layer while using the tool.

Example: LayerA is my intended source and LayerB is my intended target:

During the "target click", If I click on overlapping features from both layers, I will only have any overlapping features from LayerB showing up in the chip - any features from LayerA will be ignored by the tool.

This how the tool has always worked, but I think introducing the chips has uncovered a bit of confusion about how the tool works - especially if your maps had source features beneath target features in the Contents pane. If that was the case prior to 3.5, those features would have never been optional targets since the topmost feature was the only one available to the tool.

[cmathers]

@Scott_Harris  @JenniferCadkin   It's just such a departure from how the tool worked in Map. I understand why the global mapping exists but not letting you pick a fixed source and target in the tool at least per session makes it much slower than the older equivalent tool. A slightly faster workaround is to turn the top layer on and off. Click A, turn A off, click B, turn A on is one less click than using the chip. Is there a way to search for that enhancement request to see the specifics?

[JenniferCadkin]

@cmathers Which specific enhancement request are you looking for?  

[Melissa_B]

@cmathers Are you referring to "ENH-000132605: Allow target and source layers set in field mapping to take priority over the layers clicked on in the transfer attributes"?

[cmathers]

@JenniferCadkin @Melissa_B Yes ENH-000132605.