Let's look at this example together. On this photo you see two spatial objects (polygon).

Now I want to have their intersection. The typical way would be using one of the spatial tools, in this case the Spatial Process tool. BUT, do you know that you can that using Summarize and Formular tool as well? In this blog post we will go through this example together, creating the intersection of two polygons in three ways.

First of all, here is what the sample data looks like:

1.Summarize tool

We start with this tool since our data structure is suitable for this.

In Action, choose Add -> Spatial -> Create Intersection.

This is the result:

2.Spatial Process

Now for this we have to change our data structure so that each polygon is in one column.

This could be done using Crosstab (and other tools to create the name of the new columns). Here is one example:

In Spatial Process tool, configure as below:

In the result, we could see the intersection together with the two polygons. Compare with the picture in the beginning, now each polygon has one color and the intersection is in darker color.

If you wish to see only the intersection area, use Select tool to filter it out. The result would look similar to the result using the Summarize tool.

3. Formular tool

With ST_Intersection() formular you could be able to create intersection the same way as Spatial Process tool. The outcome result look also the same.

So, that is the three basic ways one can create an intersection. This works not only for intersection, my point in this blog post is, you can use other tools rather than spatial tools to work with spatial objects. It gives you more fun and flexibility while working in an Alteryxworkflow. I hope this post is somehow helpful for you.