An overview of the Sampling toolset

The Sampling toolset provides tools that create features used either as sampling locations or as aggregation areas. For example, the Create Random Points tool creates points that can be used as sampling locations within the extent of a dataset. The Generate Tessellation tool creates a mesh of triangle, square, or hexagon polygons within an extent that can be used to aggregate other data.

Tools in the Sampling toolset

Tool	Description
Create Fishnet	Creates a fishnet of rectangular cells. The output can be polyline or polygon features.
Create Random Points	Creates a specified number of random point features. Random points can be generated in an extent window, inside polygon features, on point features, or along line features.
Generate Points Along Lines	Creates point features along lines or polygons at fixed intervals or by percentage.
Generate Tessellation	Generates a polygon feature class of a tessellated grid of regular polygons which will entirely cover a given extent. The tessellation can be of triangles, squares, or hexagons.