Running a model


You can run a model in ModelBuilder, or by opening its dialog in ArcToolbox or ArcCatalog.

Within ModelBuilder, you can run selected processes instead of the entire model. The state of the process (not-ready-to-run, ready-to-run, or has-been-run) affects what processes in the model will be run. You cannot run any process that is in the not-ready-to-run state.

Learn more about model process states

There are three ways to run a model from within ModelBuilder:

When you run a model, it is automatically validated for you. However, you may want to validate the model before running it.

Learn more about model validation

Below is an example model with all processes in their ready-to-run state. This model takes a set of points, Facilities, and creates Thiessen polygons from them. The result polygons, one for each facility, describe the area where any location inside the polygon is closer to that facility than any other facility. Next, these polygons are overlaid with Customer points to determine each customer's closest facility.

Example model for running

Method 1: Run all processes regardless of state

On the Model menu, click Run Entire Model.

Method 2: Run all processes that are ready-to-run

On the Model menu, click Run or click the Run tool on the toolbar menu.

Both these methods are shown in the following illustration:

Running all processes

Method 3: Run a selected process

Right-click the tool and click Run, as shown below.

Running a selected process

In the above model, if you clicked the Identity tool and clicked Run, the entire model would have been run.

Adding more processes

You can add more processes to a model regardless of its run state. In the illustration below, the Frequency tool was added was added to the model above to count the number of customers for each facility. Once you add another process, you can run it using any of the methods above.

Adding more processes

Messages

When you run a model from ModelBuilder, the progress dialog will appear and messages will be written. If you have the Command Line window open, messages will be written there as well. However, you will not be able to recall these messages in the Command Line window.

You can also get messages about the last run of a model by doing the following: