I am curious to know if anyone can shed some light on the difference between ArcGIS' Spatial Join geoprocessing tool (found in Analysis -> Overlay toolbox) and the Spatial Join 'wizard' (found by right-clicking a layer -> Join -> then selecting "Join data from another layer based on spatial location" from the first drop-down).
There have been multiple times where the tool has worked and the other has failed and vice versa, especially when using ModelBuilder and Python.
I've observed this behavior, too. In my particular situation, I wanted to Join a shapefile of buffered lines with another shapefile of lines, keeping all of the latter lines that fall completely inside the former buffers, and joining the information in the buffers with these discovered circumscribed lines.
The process for the wizard is
The same process in Python code would be:
arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis (line_layer_file, buffer_layer_file, output_file, "JOIN_ONE_TO_ONE", "#", "#", "COMPLETELY_WITHIN")
Whether I run the Python version as python code or in the model builder, I get the same results . . . both of which contain seemingly random entries! There are entries included that are definitely NOT completely within the buffer. They overlap the buffer, but are not completely within it. And in fact, other lines that lie completely within the buffer can be overlooked in favor of one that only intersects/overlaps the buffer. This erroneous performance is corrected when using the wizard.
I know I remember finding a post, either in this forum or another, that this occurrence is a known issue. But I cannot find it now.
PS. There is no error message for me--both run to completion--but the results are incorrect.
I thought that Spatial join in overlay toolbox is used to join spatial locations, whilst the one in layer is mainly used to join attributes from the table. Am I missing something?
