Table Of ContentArcGIS 9
®
Geoprocessing Commands Quick Reference Guide
Copyright © 2004-2008 ESRI
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
The information contained in this document is the exclusive property of ESRI. This work is protected under United
States copyright law and other international copyright treaties and conventions. No part of this work may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage or retrieval system, except as expressly permitted in writing by ESRI. All requests should be sent to
Attention: Contracts and Legal Services Manager, ESRI, 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373-8100, USA.
The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.
Contributing Writers
Melanie Harlow, Catherine Jones, Corey Tucker
U.S. Government reStriCted/Limited riGhtS
Any software, documentation, and/or data delivered hereunder is subject to the terms of the License Agreement. In no event
shall the U.S. Government acquire greater than RESTRICTED/LIMITED RIGHTS. At a minimum, use, duplication, or
disclosure by the U.S. Government is subject to restrictions as set forth in FAR §52.227-14 Alternates I, II, and III (JUN
1987); FAR §52.227-19 (JUN 1987) and/or FAR §12.211/12.212 (Commercial Technical Data/Computer Software); and
DFARS §252.227-7015 (NOV 1995) (Technical Data) and/or DFARS §227.7202 (Computer Software), as applicable.
Contractor/Manufacturer is ESRI, 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373-8100, USA.
ESRI, ArcView, ArcGIS, ArcInfo, ArcCatalog, ArcToolbox, ArcSDE, ModelBuilder, ARC/INFO, ArcMap, 3D Analyst,
ArcEditor, and www.esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the
European Community, or certain other jurisdictions.
Other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark
owners.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Analysis toolbox 5
Cartography toolbox 11
Conversion toolbox 17
Coverage toolbox 27
Data Management toolbox 45
Geocoding toolbox 85
Linear Referencing toolbox 87
Mobile toolbox 89
Multidimension toolbox 91
Server toolbox 93
Spatial Statistics toolbox 97
3D Analyst toolbox 109
Data Interoperability toolbox 129
Geostatistical Analyst toolbox 131
Network Analyst toolbox 133
Schematics toolbox 137
Spatial Analyst toolbox 139
Tracking Analyst toolbox 189
Index 191
Appendix A: Tool licensing A-1
Introduction
I
n
t
This reference guide is designed to provide an easy and quick reference for those wanting to use the ro
d
ESRI® command language at the ArcGIS® command line and for those writing scripts. u
c
t
i
o
All commands (otherwise known as tools) are maintained in toolsets within the ArcGIS toolboxes. n
A toolbox can contain tools, toolsets, and scripts and is organized according to the collection
of geoprocessing commands it contains.
A toolset can contain tools, toolsets, and scripts and is organized according to the
geoprocessing commands it contains.
There are four different kinds of tools, and they differ only in how they are created and added to a
toolbox. However, regardless of their type, all tools can be executed from their dialog or from the
command line and can be used in models and scripts.
System tool—these tools are installed and registered on your system. Usually, these tools are
installed and registered when you install ArcGIS, although third-party developers can also
create and register system tools. System tools are sometimes called function tools by devel-
opers.
Model tool—these tools are created by you with ModelBuilder. Some of the tools in the sys-
tem toolboxes are model tools.
Script tool—these tools are created by you with a scripting language editor (typically an en-
hanced text editor). Some of the tools in the system toolboxes are script tools.
Custom tool—custom tools are built by system developers and have their own unique user
interface for creating the tool. The ArcGIS Data Interoperability extension contains custom
tools.
This guide describes the following toolboxes:
Analysis toolbox Multidimension toolbox
Cartography toolbox Mobile toolbox
Conversion toolbox Network Analyst toolbox
Coverage toolbox Schematics toolbox
Data Interoperability toolbox Server toolbox
Data Management toolbox Spatial Analyst toolbox
Geocoding toolbox Spatial Statistics toolbox
Geostatistical Analyst toolbox Tracking Analyst toolbox
Linear Referencing toolbox 3D Analyst™ toolbox
Each toolbox contains a list of the toolsets and tools as they are organized within ArcToolbox™.
The Index section at the end of this guide contains an alphabetical list of each tool, script, toolset,
and toolbox.
1
All tools are available with the ArcInfo® license or the extension with which they are associated.
n However, many are available for use with ArcView® or ArcEditor™ (sometimes with limited func-
o
i tionality). Those available with ArcView and ArcEditor are denoted with a , and those available
t
c
u with ArcEditor are denoted with a .
d
o
r
t Some tools, such as Clip, exist in multiple toolboxes. Therefore, an alias can be added as a suffix to
n
I
the tool name when more than one toolbox is available. Examples of alias usages are clip_arc, where
clip is the tool and arc is the suffix representing the Coverage toolbox, or clip_analysis, where the
suffix represents the Analysis toolbox.
The alias list:
Analysis toolbox _analysis Multidimension toolbox _md
Cartography toolbox _cartography Mobile _mobile
Conversion toolbox _conversion Network Analyst toolbox _na
Coverage toolbox _arc Schematics _schematics
Data Interoperability toolbox _di Server toolbox _server
Data Management toolbox _management Spatial Analyst toolbox _sa
Geocoding toolbox _geocoding Spatial Statistics toolbox _stat
Geostatistical Analyst toolbox _ga Tracking Analyst toolbox _ta
Linear Referencing toolbox _l 3D Analyst toolbox _3d
The syntax of an example tool:
Union_arc <in_cover> <union_cover> <out_cover> {fuzzy_tolerance} {JOIN | NO_JOIN}
Where:
Union_arc is the tool and the components that follow are the parameters.
< > indicates required parameters.
{ } indicates optional parameters; these do not need to be included. One can be skipped using # if you
need to apply only a portion of them.
The | indicates mutually exclusive arguments, and only one of the arguments in the list of options can
be specified.
In some commands, there may be an ellipsis between two arguments, such as item1...item4. This
indicates that you can give one or more (up to four in this example) names or values for that
argument.
Example:
Union_arc Treepolycov Newtreecov Finaltreecov # JOIN
2 ArcGIS 9: Geoprocessing Commands Quick Reference Guide
ArcGIS Desktop
core geoprocessing tools
Analysis toolbox
A suite of geoprocessing tools used to solve spatial or statistical problems.
Extract toolset
Contains tools used to manipulate data into manageable datasets containing only the desired features
and attributes.
A
t
Clip: Extracts those features from an input feature class that overlap with features from a clip feature on
oa
class. lbly
os
Clip <in_features> <clip_features> <out_feature_class> {cluster_tolerance} xi
s
• The output feature class will have the attributes of the input features.
• The input features may be any geometry type, but clip features must have polygon geometry.
Select: Extracts selected features from an input feature class or layer and stores them in the output
feature class.
Select <in_features> <out_feature_class> {where_clause}
• If no SQL expression is included, then all features will be included in the output feature class.
• If a SQL expression is used but returns nothing, the output feature class will be empty.
Split: Clips the input features and stores them in multiple output datasets.
Split <in_features> <split_features> <split_field> <out_workspace> {cluster_tolerance}
• The split field data type must be character. The output feature classes will be named for split field
values; therefore, they must start with a valid character.
• The number of output feature classes equals the total number of unique values in the split field.
Table Select: Extracts selected attributes from an input table or table view and stores them in an output
table.
TableSelect <in_table> <out_table> {where_clause}
• The input can be an INFO® table, a dBASE® table, a geodatabase table, a VPF table, a feature class, or
a table view.
• If a SQL expression is used but returns nothing, the output table will be empty.
5
Overlay toolset
Contains tools for topological integration of features based on symmetry.
Erase: Copies input features falling outside the erase polygon feature boundaries to the output.
Erase <in_features> <erase_features> <out_feature_class> {cluster_tolerance}
s
x
i
so
yb
alol
no
At
• Input feature polygons that are coincident with erase feature polygons will be removed.
• The erase features must be polygons.
Identity: Intersects two feature classes. The output contains the input features as well as those
overlapping features of the identity feature class.
Identity <in_features> <identity_features> <out_feature_class> {ALL | NO_FID | ONLY_FID}
{cluster_tolerance} {NO_RELATIONSHIPS | KEEP_RELATIONSHIPS}
• The input features must be point, multipoint, line, or polygon. The inputs cannot be annotation features,
dimension features, or network features.
• The identity features must be polygons.
Intersect: Creates an output feature class containing features that fall within the area common to both
input datasets.
Intersect <features {Ranks};features {Ranks}...> <out_feature_class> {ALL | NO_FID |
ONLY_FID} {cluster_tolerance} {INPUT | LINE | POINT}
• The input features must be point, multipoint, line, or polygon. The inputs cannot be annotation features,
dimension features, or network features.
• If the inputs have different geometry types (that is, line on poly, point on line, and so on), the output
feature class geometry type will default to the same as the input features with the lowest dimension
geometry.
Spatial Join: Creates a type of table join in which fields from one layer’s attribute table are appended
to another layer’s attribute table based on the relative locations of the features in the two layers.
SpatialJoin <target_features> <join_features> <out_feature_class> {JOIN_ONE_TO_ONE |
JOIN_ONE_TO_MANY} {KEEP_ALL | KEEP_COMMON} {field_mapping} {INTERSECTS | IS_WITHIN |
CONTAINS | CLOSEST} {search_radius} {distance_field_name}
6 ArcGIS 9: Geoprocessing Commands Quick Reference Guide
Description:ArcEditor, and www.esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other
