Latest Contributions by BenLeslie1

This one works for me. Thanks John for your answer - looks pretty straight forward too - I will test it later as a learning exercise. Cheers ... View more

I don't think the tool works in the way it should - maybe a bug. I have a polygon layer that contains woods and orchards - it was made by merging a few layers and I have some overlaps.  So I did a union and then a dissolve on centroid value to remove the overlaps (keeping the original FID as a stats attribute) - all working so far.  Now I want to dissolve touching polys of the same category (wood or orchard), again I want to keep an original FID so I can do a join on the original table, but this time instead of giving me the FIRST FID out of the individual groups of polys that are dissolved together every FID for all Wood polys is the same and every FID for all Orchard poly is the same - this is no good to me - doesn't make sense because it worked correctly on the first dissolve. ... View more

I'm having the same problem - I want to dissolve and I want to keep my attributes. The tool is very difficult to use - particularly if you have a large number of attributes.  To keep an attribute it must be added to the Statistics Field(s) option - these must be done one-by-one and for each one you also need to select a stats type.  Then when you run the tool all the attribute names are changed - they are prefixed with the stats type you chose - if you're using shapefiles this is bad because you start losing the original atrribute name because of the 10 character limit. So, is there a way to keep all my original attribute names? ... View more

Actually I don't know why I mention it I think they are actually very different beasts and just because the flow diagram layout is similar I want to see ModelBuilder with my FME eyes.  And whereas FME is super flexible, user friendly and powerful, I have so far found modelbuilder to clunky, inflexible and unclear. ... View more

Sorry I didn't see you also corrected the script - I thought you were just saying your way of displaying the code in GeoNet was better.  It looks like a screenshot of Notepad++ but you can select the text? I'm pretty new to Arc, I currently find ModelBuilder more confusing than code - I'm used to working with FME a lot so I want it to work like that, I find MB very unintuitive. ... View more

Thanks Dan - I'm a tiny step closer to being a python expert. ... View more

I agree - but it's not clear how you've done that. ... View more

Closer....closer.... I'm now getting some results but if I have several shapefiles in c:/temp2 the script only amends the last one (print fc lists all files correctly) This is my code now: import arcpy # Remember to change this to wherever your shapefiles are stored arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\temp2" try:     fcs = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()         for fc in fcs:         print fc         # Create the new field         arcpy.AddField_management (fc, "FILENAME", "text", "", "", "50")         # Apply the filename to all entries               arcpy.CalculateField_management (fc, "FILENAME", '"' + fc + '"')         except:     print arcpy.GetMessages () ... View more

What shoul I do to correct the while function, it still refers to fc. I get the following error:      IndentationError:unindent does not match any outer indentation level Without the .Next lines how does the code know to iterate through all by shapefiles? sorry - I still need to be spoon fed this stuff. ... View more

Good plan - my Arc machine isn't connected to the internet so usually it's a pain in the neck.  I forgot that I had downloaded the code off the internet. This is the code after my changes........ #import relevant modules, create geoprocessing dispatch object import arcpy #gp = win32com.client.Dispatch("esriGeoprocessing.gpDispatch.1") # Remember to change this to wherever your shapefiles are stored arcpy.workspace = "C:\temp2" try:     fcs = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses("*", "all")     fcs.reset()     fc = fcs.Next()     while fc:         # Create the new field         arcpy.AddField_management (fc, "FILENAME", "text", "", "", "50")         # Apply the filename to all entries               arcpy.CalculateField_management (fc, "FILENAME", '"' + fc + '"')         fc = fcs.Next() except:     print arcpy.GetMessages () ... View more

Thanks - that kind of makes sence but the script isn't doing anything.  It runs without error but doesn't add the new field. Did you download the script?  Can I ask some questions? I removed line 17:           gp = win32com.client.Dispatch............... was I correct to do this? I don't understand the 'try:' section....it says:           try:                fcs = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses("*", "all")                fcs.reset()                rc = fcs.Next() Why does it define fcs and then reset it on the next line?  What is it doing? I'll be happy if you can recommend a place where I can read up on these terms. Regards Ben ... View more

Just one dataset (actually it was originally about 120 but I've merged them all into one - that's the goal, one dataset with duplicate geometries removed) ... View more