An overview of the Feature Class toolset

The Feature Class toolset provides a set of tools designed to perform basic feature class management.

A feature class is a collection of features with the same type of geometry: point, line, polygon, or annotation.

A feature class may be stored with other feature classes in a feature dataset in a geodatabase or as a stand-alone feature class in a geodatabase. A feature class can also be stored in a shapefile.

Tools in the Feature Class toolset

Tool	Description
Append Annotation Feature Classes	Creates a geodatabase annotation feature class or appends to an existing annotation feature class by combining annotation from multiple input geodatabase annotation feature classes into a single feature class with annotation classes.
Calculate Default Spatial Grid Index	Calculates a set of valid grid index values (spatial grid 1, 2, and 3) for the input features. Grid index values will be calculated even if the input features do not support spatial grid indexing.
Calculate Default XY Tolerance	Calculates a default XY tolerance by examining the spatial reference and the extent of the feature class.
Create Feature Class	Creates an empty feature class in an enterprise, file geodatabase, or personal geodatabase; in a folder, it creates a shapefile.
Integrate	Analyzes the coordinate locations of feature vertices among features in one or more feature classes. Those that fall within a specified distance of one another are assumed to represent the same location and are assigned a common coordinate value (in other words, they are colocated). The tool also adds vertices where feature vertices are within the x,y tolerance of an edge and where line segments intersect.
Update Annotation Feature Class	Updates the input annotation feature class with text attribute fields and optionally populates the value of each new field for every feature in the feature class.