How many parcels can support a building of size X?

Question

Consider if you will polygon A of a standard unchanging dimension.  For the sake of argument lets call it a simple rectangle 10' x 20' not any irregular shape with hundreds of vertices but not a square or circle either.  How can a user assess which of a group of polygons can completely contain polygon A.  This appears like it ought to be a frequently occurring question in assessor's offices and planning departments:  How many of my town's parcels have both the amount and orientation of land to support a building of a given size and dimensions.  Can city engine do something like this easily?

DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted Answer

Scripting .... but you could work around it.

For example... Start with a building of 150 m^2 (say 10m*15m... sorry about the metric)

* establish an area threshold... say 2 x building area ... ie 300 m^2
* isolate the lots that don't meet the minimum threshold of area (simply a query for area > 300 m^2
* determine the convex hull of the building... the area of the convex hull will be > the floor area for some shapes... ie an L-shaped building.
* determine the convex hull of the the candidate lots... ensure that their area meets the minimum threshold... throw out those that dont (this woould get rid of weird shaped lots for example)
* rank order the remaining lots according to other to filter their desireability

Now... that will give you a list of lots... but if you want to see if and where exactly the building would fit on the lot, it would require a bit more work.  Further simplification would be to throw out any lots whose ratio of actual area and convex hull area deviates significantly from one.  Checks for 'within' could be done, but that would entail creating then moving the building to within the lots..

Hope you ge the drift... most of the work is deciding on your candidates and throwing out the obviously useless lots, then filtering from there.

Polygon—Help | ArcGIS Desktop if you are interested in the coding thing

Minimum bounding geometry has convex hull as a variety of other containers that may also be suitable Minimum Bounding Geometry—Help | ArcGIS Desktop