Updating a Point Shapefile Field via a "Select by Location" Query

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03-17-2015 05:51 PM
Tracy-PaulWarrington
New Contributor

Howdy Y'all,

I'm a research analyst with a bit of a problem:

I have a point shape file with wild animal sightings.  It has the usual location, date, time, species, alive/dead, activity, etc.  I had to add a new text field that indicates the county of the sighting.  I have over 22,000 records covering the entire state of Texas.

I have a polygon shape file of all the counties in the state.

-->>What I want to do is update the county field in the wild animal shape file, with the formal name of the county from the corresponding county polygon shape file.

I'd like to use a SQL query-type update process; along the lines of a "Select by Location" process under the 'Selection' menu bar item.

I'm using ArcGIS Desktop version 10.2, with Spatial Analyst 10.2.  I have a 64-bit Windows workstation, 8-core mother board and 98G of RAM.

Full Disclosure:  I'm embarrassed to add that I actually have a graduate degree in GIS/Remote Sensing; but even while sober I haven't been able to find the right Google search combination to solve my problem.  🙂

Any suggestions or references to any technique would be greatly appreciated.  Be gentle...

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OwenEarley
Occasional Contributor III

Check out the Spatial Join tool. It should be exactly what you are after.

View solution in original post

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4 Replies
DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

I believe you seek Spatial Join, which will create a new point file with county attributes appended.

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Tracy-PaulWarrington
New Contributor

Thank you very much.  It took less time to do the @#$%! spatial join than it did to write out the problem.  🙂

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OwenEarley
Occasional Contributor III

Check out the Spatial Join tool. It should be exactly what you are after.

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Tracy-PaulWarrington
New Contributor

Thank you very much!  I should have known it was already solved.  I'm going to hide my grad degree...  LOL.

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