Batch Happiness

This is a little toolbox of happiness for a Thursday with brief tutorial thrown in. The batch processing tools in ArcGIS always appeared a bit clunky to me although it's not surprising that some usability gets overlooked in such a huge program. As you can see below, the batch processing (select tool>right click>batch) option is a bit fiddly:

A while ago I started making my own modelbuilder tools to batch certain things. The toolbox I'll be talking about here is easyBatch which will batch "define projection" for rasters or features. First up we need the toolbox (.tbx file). You can get the .zip file by contacting us here.

Once you've got the .zip file unzip it somewhere sensible and you'll see it has the following files:

The numbers relate to the different versions of ArcGIS with the first (easyBatch.tbx) working with 10.2. Next you need to open up Arc and add the relevant toolbox to the ArcToolbox window. At the top of the window select ArcToolbox>right click>add toolbox:

Now you should see the easyBatch toolbox available in the ArcToolbox window:

The two tools operate just like any other tool. Double click to open them. The tool window should pop open and then you can navigate to the workspace you want to define the projections for. The recursive option will apply the command to folders within folders:

a word of warning...

The tools described here will DEFINE projection. This should only be used for data that does not yet have a projection defined. These tools will not PROJECT data that already have projections defined. The tools WILL redefine any projections you already have which can cause a host of problems so be careful out there.

use case scenario...

I find these tools most useful when gathering data from other sources. For example, downloading data from Protected Planet to work with protected areas. The metadata for the downloads will tell you what projection they are in (WGS 84 in this case). However, you'll need to define the projection before loading into Arc. Save all the shape files into one folder and then run the Batch Define Projection (Feature) tool. Done...

want to learn more?

If you'd like to learn more about how to make your own tools and save yourself hours of repetitive work why not sign up for a course? Model builder masterclass coming soon!