How do I remove unwanted attributes from spatial join using ModelBuilder?

Question

I am new to ArcGIS 10 and am currently building a model. This is a brief rundown of what I am doing at the moment. I have 2 shapefiles: one a polyline and the other is point data. I have joined both files using the spatial join tool within the model which created a shapefile that contains the attributes of both files. But I would like to get rid of the attributes obtained from the polyline and retain the attributes from the points since the shapefile has changed to a polyine.

Thanks

Answer 1

Try incorporating Delete Field into your model. You can easily drop multiple fields in this one step.

Answer 2

It sounds like you want to use the FieldMappings() object. I use the FieldMappings() object programmatically through python. However the FieldMappings() object is available through the SpatialJoin() and Merge() tools when inserted into a custom model. I suggest start reading through the FieldMappings() documentation and then play around with it. It's a bit tricky to learn at first but once you understand how it works it becomes a very useful way to merge various types of geometry (or the same types of geometry) data while keeping (or dropping) fields and attributes.