HOW TO

Set the environment settings for ArcToolbox

Last Published: April 25, 2020

Summary

Instructions provided describe how to set the environment settings for ArcToolbox.

Procedure

Environment settings can be thought of as additional parameters that a tool can use to affect its results. They differ from normal parameters in that they do not appear on a tool's dialog box (with certain exceptions). Rather, they are values set once using a separate dialog box, and are then used by tools when they are run. There are over thirty environment settings that are arranged in six categories: general, cartography, coverage, geodatabase, raster analysis, and raster storage.
There are four levels of environment settings: application, tool, model, and model process. These four environment levels form a kind of hierarchy, where application level environments are the highest level. This article only discusses setting environmental parameters at application level; the following are ways to achieve this:

  1. In the ArcToolbox window, right-click the ArcToolbox entry and click Environments.

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  2. From the Tools menu in any application, such as ArcCatalog or ArcMap, click Options and click the Geoprocessing tab. Click the Environments button, which opens the Environment Settings dialog box.

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  3. Application environments can also be set at the command line; for example, to set up scratch workspace, use command "scratchworkspace c:\scratch”.
    Click here for more environment commands.

Article ID:000010016

Software:
  • ArcMap 8 x
  • ArcMap 9 x

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