Making Maps: Module 11 - Sharing Tools

Well, this is it. The last module of the summer semester. Our final projects have been created (master's students only) and this last lab completed.

In this final assignment we learned more about sharing script tools and a little more on editing tool parameters. I used a pre-made script, script tool, and toolbox to add descriptive information, edit sys.argv[] expressions, and run the tool. While there are different ways to share scripts and tools, including compressing them in a zip file or sharing across a local network, this time we chose to embed the script, set a password, and submit the toolbox. This way the script does not have to be included. By adding the variables that correspond to the tool parameters in the sys.argv[] expressions in the script, the tool can run correctly. By adding descriptive information, the tool has the proper text for each parameter in the Help windowpane in the tool dialog box.

As to my course overall: it was informative, fun, and the skills I learned will certainly be useful in the future. The most interesting part of the class was discovering that I enjoyed programming, at least at the basic level. It was fun to start to see code as just a translation of phrases and written actions. For example, a for loop telling the software that for every X in Z, do something like A, B, or C to it. If you can think of how to say it or what you want to have happen (perhaps by using psuedocode to outline it first), you can figure out a way to use all the methods, functions, expressions, etc. to carry out the steps. By having a better grasp of the Python language, I now feel more comfortable when I happen upon other coding languages.

While I found all of our lessons useful, I feel the most relevant to me right now is learning to manipulate spatial data with Python, especially rasters. It felt much less cumbersome to use code to manipulate shapefiles and rasters, as opposed to going through all the different tool dialogs in ArcMap. Not to mention increased speed and ease when working with large amounts of data. I look forward to trying to use Python scripts more regularly in my own GIS projects.