ArcToolbox: The Geoprocessing Power Tool

ArcToolbox is a new application for performing geoprocessing operations such as conversion, overlay processing, buffering, and map transformation. More than 120 tools are organized in a tree view for easy access. Each tool has a menu-driven interface with wizards or dialogs. If you can never seem to remember whether it's the Identity, Union, or Intersect overlay operator you want--no problem; the Overlay wizard offers easy-to-interpret pictures.

ArcCatalog is fully interoperable with other applications; you can drag and drop your GIS data from ArcCatalog into ArcToolbox to take advantage of an intuitive interface to your most common geoprocessing tools. No other system offers this wealth of geoprocessing functionality, and no one else makes advanced spatial analysis so simple.

ArcToolbox: geo-processing made accessible. The right-hand window shows the hierarchy of ArcToolbox tools. The left-hand window is a single panel from the Projection wizard.

Geoprocessing Server
In addition to running these geoprocessing tools on a single machine, users of ArcInfo 8 can also take advantage of the new Geoprocessing Server. At ArcInfo 8, the network becomes your GIS platform. You can compose geoprocessing jobs on a client desktop and submit them for execution on a different hardware device (i.e., server). The Geoprocessing Server allows users to run ArcInfo applications, schedule geoprocessing for peak performance times, and run ARC Macro Language (AML) and other scripts directly from ArcToolbox. Users can compose massive geoprocessing jobs on their desktop, submit them for execution on a server, and keep working.

ArcToolbox can be considered as a new interface to the thousands of geoprocessing functions of ArcInfo. ArcToolbox makes advanced geoprocessing easier to comprehend and use. ArcToolbox brings high-level geoprocessing within the grasp of everyone.

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