This week’s lab focused on using Python scripting with ArcPy to manage geospatial data more efficiently. The tasks centered around building a full workflow from scratch: creating a geodatabase, copying in feature classes, filtering attributes with a search cursor, and generating a dictionary of population data for county seats. While the end goal was clear, the learning process was where most of the value came from.
I began by setting up the environment and script in IDLE to test and troubleshoot before moving it into ArcGIS Pro. Getting the overwriteOutput setting in place early was helpful as it prevented errors related to existing outputs and let me test sections of the script without starting over. Creating the geodatabase went smoothly, but I ran into a common issue when trying to rerun the script: the geodatabase already existed. I solved this by adding a condition that checks if the file exists before trying to create it again.
Copying the feature classes required using the Describe function to grab the basename, which ended up being essential to avoid issues with file naming inside the geodatabase. The real logic came together when working with the search cursor and dictionary. It was important to structure the WHERE clause correctly, and cleaning up cursor objects after running the loop was a small but necessary detail.
Running the full script and seeing the printed results confirmed it worked. I copied the IDLE script into a ArcGIS project Notebook and the visual map helped validate the data. While the map output was useful, the biggest takeaway from this assignment was writing and debugging a complete Python workflow that successfully managed real data from start to finish.
I just created a map from a functioning script!
Figure 1 shows the printed output from the script (3 clips), and Figure 2 displays the final map in ArcGIS Pro after running the script successfully.
No comments:
Post a Comment