Module 11 - Sharing Tools

This was our last assignment of the course, and in this one we work with Python tools again. Last week we learned to create tools, and this week we learned to share them. This is somewhat of a continuation from last week. In this lab we modified script so that the parameters would use file paths set in the tool itself instead of from the set file paths in the script. We did this by using the sys.argv[] code. The positions numbers for this start at "1", as opposed to the arcpy.GetParameter() code, which starts at "0".

We learned to edit the item description of the script tool in ArcCatalog. We learned to embed the script into the tool by right-clicking the tool in ArcCatalog and selected "Import Script." One of the more interesting features we can do now that we've imported the script is we can now set a password. The password still allows the tool to run, but the password needs to be input to view or edit the script. The tool in the assignment creates a number of random points within a feature, and then creates a buffer around those points. Below are the results of both my tool dialog and the results in ArcMap.

You can see the feature in purple with the random points (in this case, 50 of them) in black, with the light blue buffers around them.

I really enjoyed this course, and I learned a lot from it. I would have liked to have done a little more of script writing, but this course is designed to use Python with ArcGIS, and I think it teaches that very well. I learned how to use Python to perform geoprocessing tasks, and about toolboxes and tools within Python, working with rasters and different geometries, etc. I think this course is a great start as one moves forward to work more with GIS and Python programming.