Thanks for your comment, I am aware that this could be done using python, meanwhile a lot of users can’t write python scripts. This idea was written in order to help those users and to make their life easier.
Have you tried creating a model for one process (or series of processes) requiring iteration and then adding that model as a tool to a second model that also has iteration? I have used this method in model builder when I have a workflow requiring multiple iterators.
But imagine how fulfilling it would be for the programmers at ESRI to add support for multiple iterators in a model!
I try to set up tools for people who can't use Python, and found this "one iterator per model" limitation (which BTW I don't see documented) to be highly amusing. It seems totally arbitrary to me.
After playing with iterators for 15 minutes, I wanted to nest a feature class iterator inside a workspace iterator. Seemed simple and elegant. Oh well.
If you can grasp what an iterator is you can probably make the jump to Python.
After thinking about it yesterday I wrote a python iterator tool,it builds a list of the feature classes in a workspace and then returns the list. The next tool in the chain has to accept a list of feature classes. A model looks like this.
"Message tool" is just a generic thing that prints out what comes in. So running the second chain generated this:
First you see the output of the Iterator_Workspace tool as it walks the FGDB, then you see Message_tool dump the output from the tool.
I think if esri included this capability in the model builder it would be easier than using submodels. people can start doing their process automation without the need to learn how to code
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