Latest Contributions by curtvprice

Is there anyway to access the editor toolbar function with python or arcpy. No, you can't - you also cannot use the ArcObjects code the editor toolbar accesses either without using .NET development languages like C# or VB.NET. Instead,  you need to implement your task using standard (or your own) geoprocessing tools, for example Merge_management. ... View more

A few things to keep in mind: Although Spatial Analyst tools now do direct read/write of many formats, grid (folder workspace) is usually still the best choice. The workspace and scratchWorkspace should be set to the same folder for best performance. Grid format is limited to 13-characters, alphanumeric + "_", starting with a letter. Workspace, feature class, table, and field names should never begin with a number. ... View more

Just to point out there is no one answer to your question, and how Map Algebra is used is often a choice of style... I prefer using the "not" operator. You can also use the output of IsNull explicitly, as it returns 1/0 (true/false) values. I'm a big fan of the Con tool because it is so flexible, especially when combined with IsNull.  (In the expression below, if you leave off the third argument, any cell evaluating to False returns NoData in the output.) So, these expressions are all equivalent: SetNull(not IsNull("B"), "A") SetNull(IsNull("B") == 0,"A") Con(IsNull("B"),"A") ... View more

There are tools to tabulate zone areas for you (of course on projected rasters, as square degrees aren't really that useful as the actual area on the ground would vary from cell to cell throughout the grid).  The tools are: Zonal Geometry Zonal Geometry As Table ... View more

In general I've found them inconvenient because they don't exist anywhere that I can look at them while debugging or just tracing my algorithm's results Glad that helped. Au contraire, raster layer data do 'exist' - Raster layers are like feature layers - they aren't datasets, they are instead objects that point to a dataset source. For this reason the output of tools that create data are datasets, not layers. When I set up models and tools I almost use layer input so you the tool can see a picklist of layers in the map. Saves a lot of browsing! The troublesome "~" characters were part of the 8.3-version of your long path -- any path with long names in it is likely to be converted to an "8.3" format behind the scenes by Windows OS routines - and SOMA does not play well with those raw 8.3 pathnames. It looks like you've just been very prudent so you haven't invoked 8.3 names for the last four years where you were using raster tools (no mixed case, no spaces, short names, etc). The only way I know to check is using "dir /x" at the command line. But not today: E:\work\test1>dir /x Directory of E:\work\test1 06/05/2012  03:42 PM    <DIR>                       . 06/05/2012  03:42 PM    <DIR>                       .. 06/05/2012  03:39 PM    <DIR>                       testa1 06/05/2012  03:40 PM    <DIR>          TESTBV~1     testbverylongname 06/05/2012  03:42 PM    <DIR>          TMP_RI~1     tmp_rios_preproc2                0 File(s)              0 bytes                4 Dir(s)  92,880,891,904 bytes free Isn't Windows great? ... View more

In Spatial analyst click on Raster Calculator ->click Int(your raster)->click Evaluate->use your raster calculator result to convert to polygon with Raster to Polygon tool. If you're just integerizing it, you can simply use the Int tool. (IMHO, it's a lot easier to find tools by searching for them by name or keyword instead of searching through toolboxes...) The raster calculator tool, is of course much more flexible - for example, you can scale and round your values if that is necessary to preserve the values using an expression like this: Int(("myraster" * 100.00) + 0.5) ... View more

I don't totally agree with this thing but the item description is a bit too sparse for my taste as well. Some of those fields should be visible by default. ... View more

I don't totally agree with this thing but the item description is a bit too sparse for my taste as well. Some of those fields should be visible by default. ... View more

Thanks for the tips. Where I work the standard is still shapefiles and DBF tables so no part of the model touches anything geodatabase related. If you do not specify a scratch workspace, in Arc 10 the default scratch workspace (usually) is the current map document's default geodatabase, which by default is a geodatabase in your My Documents folder. I highly recommend you make sure the map document is set up with a defined workspace and scratch workspace -- and since you are only working with shapefiles, this should be a folder. In regards to the last suggestion, when I original made the model I tried to use the merge tool to field map and it didn't work. I found countless forum posts about how that was a broken tool in that sense and so I gave up on it. Does it now work correctly? I would LOVE to rebuild the model and cut it down to just a few steps! I'll have to spend an afternoon trying it! Field maps are tricky anyway, and difficult to manipulate in model builder  -- though you can if you are willing to develop Python code within the Calculate Value tool. It would be nice if there were some geoprocessing tools that provide a better interface for working with field maps in Model Builder (and Python!). A poor-man's method of field mapping I have used is to create an empty feature class (shapefile) with just the fields I want and then use the Append tool with NOTEST - fields not included in the output will simply be discarded. A way to do this efficiently is to use the Create Feature Class tool to create an in_memory temp feature class ("in_memory/tmpPoly") and then run AddField/DeleteField in Python code (Calculate Value) to set up the schema (field layout) you need - this works fast on an in memory feature class. Then Copy Features this empty feature class to a shapefile and Append (NOTEST) your data to it. As I said, writing Python code to manipulate field maps in Calculate Value is the "real" way to do it, but it is not trivial coding IMHO. [ATTACH=CONFIG]14881[/ATTACH] I know it seems like a pain to write Python code in ModelBuilder, but when you get more than fifty tools exposed in a model, it can take a very long time to validate the model (as you have found). It would be much more efficient to put your many AddField commands inside a Calculate Value tool as I have in the above example. If you agree that validating models is way too slow, please vote up this idea on ideas.esri.com (you need to be logged in for the link to work): Speed up Toolbox load in ArcGIS 10 https://c.na9.visual.force.com/apex/ideaView?id=08730000000c1uFAAQ ... View more

I'm attempting to iterate by workspace in modelbuilder.  However I then need to convert each output workspace into a format that would be usable as an input by the composite bands tool.  This includes raster datasets, raster lyrs, among others.  Essentially I need to input a group of rasters organized by folder into the composite bands tool instead of just one at a time. You can use Iterate Datasets within each workspace, and use the Collect Values tool to put them together into a multi-value for the Composite Bands tool. Since you can only have one iterator in a model, you need to nest models to accomplish this; your Iterate Workspaces in the "outside" model and your Iterate Rasters in the "inside" model. Hope this helps you! ... View more

Hello, I have a raster (grid) file that has about ~11,000 columns and ~ 6,000 rows.  I want to select / create a new grid that contains the top 10,000 valued cells.  I have done two analyses and want to compare the 'spatial overlap' between the two approaches for the top 10,000 cells.  I have yet to arrive at any method, let alone a clever one, to perform this operation.  Does anyone have a suggestion on how to perform such a task? Another approach that may be more automated that Steve's approach is the Slice() tool. Seems to me that a more useful approach (for most modeling exercises) may be to locate the top 10 percent of cells, rather than the top 10,000, ie, where are the "hot areas", in a scale-independent manner: from arcpy.sa import * topcells10  = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,10,"EQUAL_AREA") <= 9,ingrid) # top 10% cell values topcells10x = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,10,"EQUAL_AREA") <= 9,1) # top 10% cells tagged "1" topcells01  = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,100,"EQUAL_AREA") <= 99,ingrid) # top 1% If you decide to stick with your original approach of number of cells, you'd need an extra step to count the cells and estimate a percentage from that number: datacells = SetNull(IsNull(ingrid),1) tmpStat = "in_memory/tmpStat" arcpy.analysis.Statistics(datacells,tmpStat,"COUNT SUM") Rows = arcpy.SearchCursor(tmpStat) cellCount = Rows.next().SUM_COUNT arcpy.Delete_management(tmpStat) # find percent cutoff for ~ 10,000 cells (if there are ties this will not be precise) # "lev" value may be adjusted to match the magnitude of your percent and how # close you want to hit your number of cells #   (this could be automated using math.log10 to measure the size #   of your percent value; I leave that to someone else) lev = 100 thresh = lev * ( 1.0 - (10000 / cellCount)) topcells = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,lev,"EQUAL_AREA") <= thresh,ingrid) ... View more

Hello, I have a raster (grid) file that has about ~11,000 columns and ~ 6,000 rows.  I want to select / create a new grid that contains the top 10,000 valued cells.  I have done two analyses and want to compare the 'spatial overlap' between the two approaches for the top 10,000 cells.  I have yet to arrive at any method, let alone a clever one, to perform this operation.  Does anyone have a suggestion on how to perform such a task? Another approach that may be more automated that Steve's approach is the Slice() tool. Seems to me a better approach (for most modeling exercises) would be to locate the top 10 percent, rather than the top 1000, ie, where are the "hot areas", in a scale-independent manner: topcells = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,100,"EQUALAREA") < 90,ingrid) If you wanted to set this as a number of cells, you'd need an extra step to count the cells and pick a threshhold: datacells = SetNull(IsNull(ingrid),1) ... arcpy.analysis.Statistics(datacells,"in_memory/tmpStat","COUNT SUM") ... Rows = arcpy.SearchCursor("in_memory/tmpStat") ... cellCount = Rows.next().SUM_COUNT ... arcpy.Delete_management("in_memory/tmpStat") ... # find percent cutoff for ~ 10,000 cells (if there are ties this will not be precise) ... # levels should be adjusted to match the magnitude of your percent ... #   (this could be automated using math.log to measure the size ... #   of your percent value, I leave that to someone else) ... lev = 100 ... thresh = lev * ( 1.0 - (10000 / cellCount)) ... topcells = SetNull(Slice(ingrid,lev,"EQUAL_AREA") < thresh,ingrid) ... View more

When I import a module I've written, I also like to reload the module to update any changes I may have made to it, so: sys.path.append(r'modulePath') import module reload(module) The reload() is only necessary if you are in an interactive python session. An import will always read your (updated) source at compilation time, unless the module was already imported "upstream", ie by code that is calling your program. Fraxinus: you can also import a toolbox and run a script (in the toolbox) that way. Calling a script tool from a script works, but can cause problems with performance and stability. A better way to call another script is to set it up so you can call the script either as a script tool or as a Python function. This is done using the __name__ property, which is always '__main__' when you are running the script directly, say, as a script tool, double clicking the .py file, or entering the name of the .py file at a system prompt. There's a nice example of this in this Esri blog post by Dale Honeycutt: '>ArcGIS Blog: PythonTemplate To reiterate what Dan pointed out, the folder "." (relative to the script) is always in the sys.path, so if you if the other script is in the same folder as this one import script2.py will find it. You can place a folder scripts at paths relative to the your script and locate them this way: import sys import os Here = os.path.dirname(sys.argv[0]) sys.path.append(Here + "/utils") import script2 # will find here/Utils/script2.py You can also set up a "package" to look through a whole folder tree, but that's generally beyond the scope of a simple ArcGIS script tool. ... View more