An overview of the Extract toolset

This topic applies to ArcGIS for Desktop Advanced only.

Contains tools that are used to select features or parts of features in a coverage, then create a new coverage containing these features.

Clip and Split both use a polygon coverage to determine which features will be extracted to a new coverage. When using Clip, the outermost polygon extracts the features. Split can be used to extract features to several different output coverages by identifying a particular polygon attribute field (item). The number of output coverages is determined by the number of unique values in the split field.

Select extracts features from the input coverage based on their attribute values. (Select is similar to the ARC/INFO Reselect command.)

The input coverages features can be polygons, lines, or points.

The output coverages contain the same vector formats (for example, point, line, or polygon) as the input coverages, build topology, and contain the same feature attribute information as the input coverages.

Tool	Description
Clip	Uses the outside polygon boundary of the clip coverage to cookie-cut features and attributes from the input coverage.
Select	Extracts selected features from an input coverage and stores them in the output coverage.
Split	Clips portions of the input coverage into multiple coverages.

Tools in the Extract toolset