Sorting feature class to calculate sequential ID field using ArcGIS Field Calculator?

I am in ArcMap and I want to sort the records based on a field and then do a Calculate Field with an auto-incrementing value with the sort in-place. Any ideas?

It looks like I could get an update cursor on the feature class then do an auto-increment, but I would still like to see if there is a way to do this in the Field Calculator in ArcMap.

Answer

I used ModelBuilder and I did a field sort followed by calculate field using the sort code below and it worked great.

Previously, I had tried these two steps outside of ModelBuilder and it failed.

Expression:

autoIncrement()

Expression Type: PYTHON_9.3

Code Block:

rec=0
def autoIncrement():
    global rec
    pStart = 1 #adjust start value, if req'd 
    pInterval = 1 #adjust interval value, if req'd

    if (rec == 0): 
        rec = pStart 
    else: 
        rec = rec + pInterval 
    return rec