What tool to find how much of one polygon feature is within polygons of another feature?

[Atlas_Beetle]

I have two different polygon features one is a large number of irregular shaped areas and the other .... I want to run a tool that will tell me how much (area) of my irregular polygons fall within each grid section. I figure there must be some way to populate a table that just lists how much irregular polygon area is in each of my numbered grid cells, but I think I'm looking in the wrong place with the Tabulate Area tool, or maybe I'm just not understanding how to appropriately use the tool.

This seems to me like pretty core analysis, so I figure there must be a tool to do it, but the names aren't always intuitive when you search for them. Appreciate any help, cheers.

[JayantaPoddar · Accepted solution]

Try Tabulate Intersection (Analysis)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

[Atlas_Beetle]

This sounds right, if I'm reading the instructions right it should let me pick what class field it looks for which would be great because my polygons have both map area and surface area, and I need it to consider surface area.

It does not appear to be working. I must have some input wrong I keep getting a "Warning 000117: Empty Output Generated". Notice despite it also telling me it succeeded. It is doing the same for the intersect tool which is something I've used before so I can't think why it has an issue now.

Ah I think I made a classic arc error. I think I had something selected in an attribute table that was outside the intersection. Foozled that one.

Any advice on how to properly use the SUM aspect of the tool. I think it is producing a table that t...

[DanPatterson]

This may not be what you are looking for, but I will explain what it does just in case...

Tabulate Area (Spatial Analyst)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

it provides a cell count not the actual area, to get those values, multiply the cell count by the cell area.

The figure in the link can be followed to assess the logic, for example

zone 0 in the zone raster has 3 class 10, 1 class 11, 1 class 12, and 0 class 13 from the class raster.

You will note that the zone 0 is not a contiguous area but spread out over the image.  This is effectively a multipart feature.

If your zone were a contiguous area in space, then the results would be just for that area.

Remember, it is cell count times cell area to get the actual area.

[DanPatterson]

Give it try then and see what works