Geoprocessing in Python

I know its becoming redundant, but every week I have to say it. This lab, by far, took the cake. It was the most challenging lab I have done yet. It required me to create a script from scratch that would take a shapefile, assign it XY coordinates. Then form there, each of those points would have its own 1000 meter buffer. The buffers would then be dissolved in to one feature with the use of the Dissolve tool.

After numerous attempts I tried exporting my model as a python script and it had more trouble running than when I was attempting the script myself. With the use of ArcGis Help, I was able to look at the scripts of each tool. I copied a few of them in to my script and adjusted some of the lines and did a little fine tuning. I will say that this assignment took me so long due to a very easy oversight. When I was first creating my xy points, I couldn't find the output file and spent hours upon hours attempting to understand where it was going. Come to find out, it was just adding the x and y fields to the attribute table in order to add the coordinate points.