I would like to take a file with location id's and coords, overlay a grid and count the number of locations within each grid and color it up based on the number.
Rendy,
After projecting your drill hole locations, one option that you could take is to create a fishnet grid and then perform a spatial join on the permits.
You could also use ModelBuilder or create a script tool to string these 3 steps together to make it look like a customly built tool for this workflow.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks,
Matt Ballard