Latest Contributions by DaleHoneycutt

Have you tried the Add Spatial Index tool? ... View more

To use a feature service in  Desktop geoprocessing, you need to add the feature service to ArcMap.  Once the service is in ArcMap's table of contents (TOC), you can use any of the layers within the service in geoprocessing (tools, models, scripts, etc).  You can use the Copy Features tool to download the data to a local database.  The only caveat is that you need to be aware of the maximum number of features you can download.  For feature services hosted on ArcGIS Online, this number is typically 1000.  Here's a blog post that explains more: Consuming feature services with geoprocessing/.  You need version 10.1 or higher to use feature services w/in geoprocessing. ... View more

Try using the Intersect tool Inputs are your "busy streets" and the routes that students take Set the Output Type parameter to POINT The output will be the points (nodes) where the two routes intersect. It will also include, I'm guessing, points where busy streets intersect. I'd suggest you look at this blog post about creating a street intersection list.  Although it doesn't solve your problem directly, it may give you good ideas to solve your problem. ... View more

Since you're scheduling a script, I thought I might mention this recent blog post on scheduling Python scripts -- it shows how to discover the "default" Python being run.  Scheduling a Python script or model to run at a prescribed time ... View more

The issue is that Eliminate Polygon Part is looking for "donuts".  You have both donuts and polygons of the donuts.  Sorry, that doesn't make a lot of sense.  Perhaps the best way to think of it is that you have polygons that are completely surrounded by a single polygon and you want to delete these, leaving holes that you can then eliminate with Eliminate Polygon Part.  (I was hoping that Spatial Join could be used, but my attempts didn't pan out) I have a methodology and would be glad to post data and a model. What version are you on? Hopefully 10.2. Here's a brief high-level description of the method.  I first copied your New_Shapefile.shp to a file geodatabase and renamed it "orig_data".  Run Eliminate Polygon Part on orig_data using 25 acres. Output = orig_data_eliminate Run Identity with orig_data and orig_data_eliminate as the two inputs. Output = overlay Run Summary Statistics on overlay.  Parameters: Statistics Field = FID_orig_data with statistics type of COUNT.  Case Field = FID_orig_data.  Output table = overlay_statistics Run Join Field.  Input table = overlay, Input Join Field = FID_orig_data, Join Table = overlay_statistics, Output Join Field = FID_orig_data, Join Fields = FREQUENCY Run Select on overlay feature class. Output = overlay_select.  Expression = "FREQUENCY = 1" Finally, run Eliminate Polygon Part again with overlay_select as input and 25 acres. This is the unoptimized basic method-improvements could be made.  The key, however, is to run Eliminate Polygon Part then overlay (using Intersect) the original feature class with the output of Eliminate Polygon Part to yield a feature class with duplicate polygons (FREQUENCY = 2) that can then be deleted/selected/etc. ... View more

My mistake -- I misread your original post.  I thought you wanted to calculate Geodesic distance, not euclidean distance. So, back to your original question about calculating Euclidean distance.  You say you want to "calculate the euclidean distance" -- calculate the euclidean distance between what?  A collection of points?  The distance between two sets of features?  The length of a line feature?  The perimeter length of a polygon? If your data is in a geodatabase (as opposed to a shapefile), lines and polygons have their length/perimeter calculated and stored in the attribute table.  If you have shapefiles, copy them into a geodatabase, such as a file geodatabase, and length/perimeter will automatically be calculated. If you want to calculate distance between features, have a look at the Near tool ... View more

You need a line feature class in a geographic (unprojected) coordinate system. Add a Double field to this feature class.  Name it something like GeoDistance. Use the Calculate Field tool with the following settings: Input table:  the line feature class Field: GeoDistance (or whatever you named the field you added) Expression: !Shape.length@meters! (you can use other units besides meters) Expression Type: PYTHON_9.3 ... View more

Peder: I assume that you have a polygon dataset of continent boundaries that you can use.  If so, you can use the Near tool or the Generate Near Table tool to find the closest continent (polygon) to your point.  Be sure to check on the Location parameter which will output the x,y of the nearest point on the continent polygon (NEAR_X and NEAR_Y fields) Near and Generate Near Table use Euclidean distance to determine the closest (near) feature.  But what you can do as a post process is to create a line that starts at the location of your input point and ends at the NEAR_X and NEAR_Y point.  You can then calculate the geodesic distance of this line.  See the blog post  Calculating Geodesic Distance Between Points for methodology to do this. At 10.2.1, we've rewritten the Near and Generate Near Table tools use geodesic distance calculations. ... View more

Try using a featureSet load/copy, as in: fs = arcpy.FeatureSet() fs.load(input_table_path) fs.save(output_table_path) ... View more

For future reference, here are two help topics about foreground/background: Foreground and background processing -- general stuff about foreground/background Running custom model or script tools in the background -- this has some good stuff about running models in background, like making all layers parameters and how models inherit the foreground/background setting of tools it uses. ... View more

My first response is that Copy Features is being executed once per iteration, so that's what causes the slow-down.  Are you saying that it takes 2 minutes per iteration? ... View more

In your model, you could use the Calculate Field tool with variable substitution.  The model variable "Value (2)" contains the value of Grs_acre_sum.  First, add a field to your sections named something like "GRS_acres".  Then, in your model, add the Calculate Field tool.  The input table is t_sections, the field is GRS_acres, and the value is %Value (2)%.  This should work in theory, but I haven't tested it for syntax - but I think you get the idea. As an alternative, you could run the Feature To Point tool on your tracts. Be sure to check the "Inside" option.  This will create a point feature class of tract centroids with all the attributes of the tracts.  Now that you have centroid points, just about any overlay operation will get you what you want.  You could run Spatial Join with the target=sections, join=centroids, join one_to_many, with the INTERSECT option.  Or run Identity or Intersect followed by Summary Statistics.  But the easiest is probably Spatial Join. After re-reading the doc, I discovered that the HAVE_THEIR_CENTER_IN option doesn't do what you'd like it to do (and what I thought it would do) -- it's the centroid of the target features that is used. ... View more

When running a model within ModelBuilder (using the Run button), output is always overwritten regardless of the overwrite output setting.  This is by design and is a good thing. However, if you run the model as a tool -- that is, you expand the toolbox and its models in the Catalog window, then double-click the model to open its dialog box,  overwrite outputs does take effect; if you enter an existing dataset for an output parameter, it'll have a red X if it exists. ... View more

This is just a warning, meaning that the tool/model will still execute, it just will execute slower than if you had an index. If you added an attribute index but are still getting a warning in ModelBuilder, it may be because you need to validate the model (the icon with the checkmark on it, or from the Model Menu, choose Validate).  When in a ModelBuilder session, ModelBuilder isn't aware of changes to data you make outside of ModelBuilder.  That's what validate does -- refreshes all the data and variables.  If this doesn't do the trick, then the only thing I can think of is that you didn't create the index on the right dataset. ... View more