Using Grid Garage tools in ArcGIS ModelBuilder
You can drag-and-drop any of the Grid Garage (GG) tools into an ArcGIS model when it is in ‘Edit’ mode. You need to know how to build models using ArcGIS ModelBuilder before attempting this. See ESRI ArcGIS Online Help for instructions and tutorials on this topic.
Each Grid Garage tool requires an input table containing a field (called ‘geodata’ by default) that contains the full path of all the input geodata to be processed. Each tool also generates a ‘Results Table’ that also contains an ‘geodata’ field listing the paths of all the output data. This allows the tools to be daisy chained together where the output of the previous tool can become the input for the next, as shown below.
Example model build using Grid Garage Tools in ArcGIS Model Builder.
The model shown in the figure above illustrates an example of a custom model built in ArcGIS ModelBuilder that utilises three of the Grid Garage tools. The first tool Geodata > Search creates the Results Table listing all the geodata found in the ‘Workspace to Search’ path. This table then feeds straight into the Geodata > Describe tool which generates a Results Table reporting on many of the geodata attributes including projection type. The ArcGIS ‘Table Select’ tool (a standard ArcGIS tool) then selects only those geodata items that are ‘raster’ data and are in ‘MGA Z56’ projection. These selected data items are then fed into the Raster > Clip Grid Garage tool which clips out a subset of the data based on the ‘Polygon feature to clip by’ which is a polygon feature class defining the project study area.
Other standard ArcGIS tools can also be used in combination with the Grid Garage tools. The ‘Table Select’ ArcGIS tool is used in this example model to select a subset of the geodata items, based on their data type and projection, before being fed into the Raster>Clip Grid Garage tool.
We recommend that if you’re generating multiple (intermediate) geodata outputs in your model, e.g. a Raster > Clip output followed by a Raster > Resample output, then you should specify a different ‘Result Workspace’ for each one. This also makes it easier to validate the outputs from each tool and de-bug if things go wrong.