Model Builder: Difference between revisions

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Brian Wilson (talk | contribs)
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ArcGIS 9.x has this thing called "Model Builder" that lets you build flow charts* and then execute them.  
ArcGIS 9.x has a new thing called "Model Builder" that lets you build scripts in the form of flow charts and then execute them.


Once you have a flow chart built and working, then you can export the code (Model->Export->To Script->Python). This gives you a starting point for writing your own Python [[Geoprocessing]] for use as components in Model Builder.
The idea is to make programming more accessible for non-programmers.


* I think they call them "UML diagrams" now or something esoteric like that.
The flow chart "language" is extremely limited as a programming medium,
but it has one big advantage for learning to program in the ESRI domain.
Once you have a "model" built and working, you can generate the equivalent Python code. (Model->Export->To Script->Python). This gives you a starting point for writing your own Python [[Geoprocessing]] scripts for use as components in Model Builder, or as standalone tools.


In the beginning in programming classes, they made us draw flow charts.
There used to be a joke in programming school back in the olden days that went like this: All flow charts can be simplified to this:
We all wrote the code first, then did the flow charts so that we'd get
 
credit for doing our homework. Then they invented "top-down" programming,
[[Image:UniversalFlowChart.jpg]]
and we'd write our program then we'd to do pseudo-code to get all the points.
Now we have to design flow charts first, then generate the code so that we
can fix it up and make it run. Once you export the flow chart into the code,
you can't go backwards so it's safe to throw the flow chart away.

Revision as of 16:41, 26 April 2006

ArcGIS 9.x has a new thing called "Model Builder" that lets you build scripts in the form of flow charts and then execute them.

The idea is to make programming more accessible for non-programmers.

The flow chart "language" is extremely limited as a programming medium, but it has one big advantage for learning to program in the ESRI domain. Once you have a "model" built and working, you can generate the equivalent Python code. (Model->Export->To Script->Python). This gives you a starting point for writing your own Python Geoprocessing scripts for use as components in Model Builder, or as standalone tools.

There used to be a joke in programming school back in the olden days that went like this: All flow charts can be simplified to this:

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