Editing data with geoprocessing tools

The Editing toolbox provides a set of geoprocessing tools to perform bulk edits to your data. These tools are useful for performing data cleanup, especially on data that was imported from another source, such as computer-aided design (CAD).

Effective use of the Editing toolbox geoprocessing tools can improve your productivity because the tools apply edits in bulk, such as to all features or all selected features. In most cases, the similar editing function applies to only one feature at a time.

For example, you have imported some CAD data into a feature class. A typical workflow with these tools might include running Trim Line, Extend Line, or Snap to ensure the lines connect. In fact, you could perform these tasks in a semi-automated manner by running the Editing toolbox geoprocessing tools in a model to fix many of the spatial integrity issues, applying a geodatabase topology with the Must Not Have Dangles rule to find additional lines that do not connect, then using the ArcMap editing tools to address any remaining errors.

Because these tools modify input data rather than creating output feature classes, you might want to run the tools on a copy of the data to ensure that you are using appropriate tolerance values. This way, you can avoid editing the data beyond the level of cleanup you intended. In addition, if you run the geoprocessing tools during an edit session, you can undo the result.

Many of these tools fall into a data cleanup category, for example, after data is captured or digitized with an inadequate precision, or lack of a snapping environment resulting in polygon boundaries that are not closed (have gaps), or lines that undershoot or overshoot their intended intersection with other lines. Editing tools provide a rich set of functionality to quickly address these types of data quality issues. These tools internally manage the edit sessions. You do not have to start and/or stop the edit sessions when using these tools.