A quick tour of sharing custom tools

You can share geoprocessing results as a package or as a service. When you share a result, ArcGIS makes a copy of your model and script tools, examines their contents, and makes changes to the copy to ensure that the tool will execute on another computer. In addition, the data that was used to create the result is also shared.

But what if you want to share your custom tools and not share any data? That is, you want to give someone your toolbox and have them use the tools within, just as they would with a system toolbox? You can do this, but it requires some skill on your part:

When sharing custom tools and toolboxes, you have two formats in which you can deliver your tools:

  1. Python toolbox (.pyt)
  2. Custom toolbox (.tbx) with model or script tools

Python toolboxes are well-suited for delivering custom tools. All that's required is the .pyt file.

Models in a custom toolbox can be delivered as long as they don't use any custom tools that are not located in another toolbox. They can use any system tool, but you need to be aware of your user's license levels—you cannot use system tools that your user is not licensed for.

Scripts in a custom toolbox should have their code embedded in the tool. Otherwise, you will need to deliver the .py files along with the toolbox, typically using a ZIP compression utility.

Learn more about creating custom toolsLearn more about documenting toolsLearn more about managing scratch dataLearn more about embedding scripts and password protecting tools

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5/6/2015