ModelBuilder Blog

Model report provides a flattened view of all the elements in a model and their hidden properties. This view also enables finding and replacing element names and their values. 

In the report view, typing a search string will initiate a search immediately. The Find drop-down menu provides options to refine the search results. Use the Find Previous and Find Next buttons to cycle through the search results and replace the occurrences one by one or together. 

Examples of using Find and Replace include:

1. Replacing repeated occurrences of “Copy Features” with another string in variable names.
2. Replacing the absolute local paths to “%scratchGDB%” for the output values.
3. Replacing the field name in the where clause of many SQL queries. 

To understand more, check out this video on using Find and Replace in ModelBuilder.

Additional Resources
Model Report

Parse Path is one of the Utility tools in ModelBuilder that parses an input into its path, name, extension, and workspace.

Examples of where you can use this tool include :

1. Parse the incoming path into its name, extension or a workspace name. These output variables can then be used as inline variable substitution in other tools.
2. Create formatted output strings without special characters (for example space, slashes etc.)  for its name, extension and workspace variables.

To understand more, check out this video created by our summer intern, Atreyi Guin. 

Additional Resources :

Examples of using Parse Path tool

Calculate Value tool is a ModelBuilder specific tool that returns a value based on Python.

Substituting the value of a variable using the name between the percent sign (%variable name%) is called inline substitution in ModelBuilder.

This blog is part of a "Now you know" series that shares new functionalities/tricks you can use for efficiency or to solve a case in your workflow.

There are several ways to add geoprocessing tools to a model, including the following:

• Use the ModelBuilder ribbon
• Drag tools from the Geoprocessing pane
• Drag tools from the Catalog pane or Catalog window (including your own models and scripts)

The options above depend on your work and preference, but there is a better way; adding tools from within a model. To add a tool within a model, click anywhere in a Model view and start to type the name of the tool. The Add Tools To Model dialog box opens with a list of tools. The following will be listed:

• All system tools
• ModelBuilder specific tools
• Your model and script tools within the project 

Double-click a tool from the list to add it to the model, or select many tools and drag them to your model.

Adding tools in a model

Watch for our upcoming posts in this "Now you know series".