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I have a bunch of rasters and a point file. I need the information from ll the raster files to be added to my points.

My usual workflow is to use the Spatial Analyst sample tool. It works fine and I can do a spatial join to get the information added to the point file. However, furstratingly the sample tool never seems to offer useful field headings and with a lot of rasters it can become confusing as to which value relates to which raster. Does anyone know of a script or workaround that can produce a table with field headings?

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2 Answers 2

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If you are doing this in a model or script you can add a field, calculate the field with the grid_code (or whatever field it creates) and then delete the grid_code field. That way everything goes into a properly named field and the default name field is gone!

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The ArcToolbox > Spatial Analyst Tools > Extraction > Extract Multi Values to Points tool assigns multiple rasters values to a point feature class and assigns the raster name as the column name(s).

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  • That's a neater solution to this problem. I like it. No flexibility though, if you've got multiple rasters called the same thing what happens there?
    – Michael Stimson
    Commented Jun 16, 2014 at 23:01
  • How would you otherwise account for an identical raster naming convention? I guess you could use a counter in a script to add an increment value to a filename but this seems like a poor way to manage data and an outlier occurrence. I have never tried it but I imagine that ESRI added an error handling routine that creates a new name if it already exist in the point attribute table.
    – Jeffrey Evans
    Commented Jun 16, 2014 at 23:04
  • I reckon give the rasters sensible names first. An ounce of preparation... Grid rasters by file limitations have short names and can be identical but of different times/scenes which would cause this situation to occur. Shapefiles have a limit on attribute name lengths. With this in mind give the rasters sensible names first and then there's no problem to fix is there.
    – Michael Stimson
    Commented Jun 16, 2014 at 23:08
  • It's worth remembering that you're limited to 13 (or 15, I forget) characters for field headings if your table is going into a geodatabase.
    – Oliver Burdekin
    Commented Jun 16, 2014 at 23:15
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    A 10 character field name limitation for shapefiles. Legacy of the dbf format. ESRI file geodatabase field name lengths can be 64 characters, see: resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/index.html#//…
    – Jeffrey Evans
    Commented Jun 16, 2014 at 23:52

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