Select by Attribute --Top 500 values selection in attribute table - ArcGis

Question

Is there any way we can select top 500 values in attribute table? I tried by sorting area field ascending/descending... but I can't count big numbers to select. In microsoft excell we can do know, similarly in arcgis, is there any code to keep in attribute selection ??

Answer 1

A non-programmable way to do this would be to sort your table as you have done, and then just go directly to the nth record that you want (by manually typing the value at the bottom of the attribute table). Once you get the field value for the nth value, just do step 4 in dklassen's first post.

Answer 2

I think this logic should work.

Step 1. cursor through the table and populate an array of the AREA values.

Step 2. sort the array by AREA.

Step 3. Find out the 500th largest AREA value.

Step 4. Select the table by attribute where AREA >= the 500th largest value.

Answer 3

Perhaps I don't understand your question, but I am not sure why you are counting these values. Let your script do that.

e.g. In python

import arcpy

myarray = []

cur = arcpy.SearchCursor("MYSHAPEFILE")

for row in cur:

        myarray.append(row.SHAPE_AREA)

mysortedarray = sorted(myarray)

value500 = mysortedarray[-500]

Then you can select by attribute using this value.