Add Geometry Attributes - ArcGIS 10.2.1 Tool

New at 10.2.1 is a simplified ways of adding geometry properties to a feature class.  The Add Geometry Attributes geoprocessing tool is a short cut from using the calculate field's geometry calculations.

Let's use the old way first:

    fc = r"some datasource"
    arcpy.AddField_management(fc, fieldName1, "DOUBLE", 
                              fieldPrecision, fieldScale)
    arcpy.AddField_management(fc, fieldName2, "DOUBLE", 
                              fieldPrecision, fieldScale)
 
    # Calculate centroid
    arcpy.CalculateField_management(fc, fieldName1, 
                                    "!SHAPE.CENTROID.X!",
                                    "PYTHON_9.3")
    arcpy.CalculateField_management(fc, fieldName2, 
                                    "!SHAPE.CENTROID.Y!",
                                    "PYTHON_9.3")

So here we create the field and then perform a calculation on the data set to get the X/Y centroid of the data.

At 10.2.1 you can clean this up and just do the following:

fc = "some dataset"
arcpy.AddGeometryAttributes_management(fc, "CENTROID")

With just two lines of code, we did what took multiple line previously to 10.2.1.

The Add Geometry Attributes tool is a time saver, and makes life just a tad easier.  It's a convenient tool that allows for quick addition of geometry attributes.

Check out more about this tool here.

Enjoy