Accessing 9.x Spatial Analyst toolbar functionality in ArcGIS 10

In ArcGIS 10, all of the capabilities of Spatial Analyst are available to you through geoprocessing tools and Python.

If you are familiar with the Spatial Analyst toolbar in 9.3 and earlier releases of ArcGIS, you will notice that the toolbar in ArcGIS 10 no longer has the drop-down list of certain individual operations. There were only about 30 individual capabilities that were directly available that way, but using the geoprocessing tools instead provides full access to all 170 individual capabilities of Spatial Analyst, including 14 operations that were not available in the old Raster Calculator or Workstation Grid.

If you wish, you can customize the default Spatial Analyst toolbar by adding any specific tools you frequently use to it.

9.x Toolbar tools and their Geoprocessing tool equivalents

The following table maps the relationship between the tools available on the Spatial Analyst toolbar in ArcGIS 9.x with their corresponding Spatial Analyst geoprocessing tools in ArcGIS 10.

9.3 Spatial Analyst toolbar control		Geoprocessing tool equivalent
Distance	Straight Line Optional outputs: Create direction Create allocation	Euclidean Distance Optional outputs: Euclidean Direction Euclidean Allocation
	Allocation	Euclidean Allocation
	Cost Weighted Optional outputs: Create direction Create allocation	Cost Distance Optional outputs: Cost Back Link Cost Allocation
	Shortest Path	Cost Path
Density	Density type: Kernel Simple	Equivalent: Kernel Density Line Density, Point Density
Interpolate to Raster	Inverse Distance Weighted	IDW
	Spline	Spline
	Kriging	Kriging
Surface Analysis	Contour	Contour
	Slope	Slope
	Aspect	Aspect
	Hillshade	Hillshade
	Viewshed	Observer Points, Viewshed
	Cut/Fill	Cut Fill
Cell Statistics		Cell Statistics
Neighborhood Statistics		Focal Statistics
Zonal Statistics		Zonal Statistics as Table
Zonal Histogram		Zonal Histogram
Reclassify		Reclassify
Raster Calculator		Raster Calculator
Convert	Features to raster	Feature to Raster (In the Conversion toolbox > To Raster toolset.)
	Raster to Features	Raster to Point Raster to Polyline Raster to Polygon (In the Conversion toolbox > From Raster toolset.)
Options	General tab: Working directory Analysis mask Coordinate system	Equivalent: Current Workspace environment Mask environment Output Coordinate System environment
	Extent tab: Analyst extent Snap extent to	Equivalent: Output Extent environment Snap Raster environment
	Cell Size Analysis cell size	Equivalent: Cell Size environment

Analysis environment

In ArcGIS 9.x, the analysis environment for the toolbar was controlled from the Options menu and was separate from the environment settings used by geoprocessing tools. This could lead to some confusion and inconsistent results for similar operations performed between the toolbar and the geoprocessing tool. ArcGIS 10 simplifies things by having only one analysis environment when running tools. Reference the geoprocessing environment settings for more information.

Finding equivalent tools from the 9.x toolbar

If you are having difficulty finding the Spatial Analyst geoprocessing tool that corresponds to a tool from the old Spatial Analyst toolbar, the Search window has been programmed to include the old names and provide you with the new equivalent.

For example, to find the equivalent for the Distance > Straight Line tool from the Spatial Analyst 9.3 toolbar, do the following:

1. Click on the Search button or hit Ctrl+F.
2. Click on the Tools link.
3. Type the name of the tool you are looking for in the search box and press Return.

You should see the name of the tool to use in the returned list. In the following example, the Shortest Path item on the toolbar was searched on, and the first return was Cost Path, which is the geoprocessing tool equivalent of this toolbar function.

Learn more about finding tools

Map Algebra and the Raster Calculator

The Raster Calculator tool that was available in ArcGIS 9.x has been superseded by a new Raster Calculator geoprocessing tool in ArcGIS 10. This new tool has a similar calculator-like interface to that in the previous toolbar, allowing you to easily execute Map Algebra expressions. It can also be used in ModelBuilder in a similar way to the SOMA (Single Output Map Algebra) tool that was available in previous releases.