Splitting polygon in narrow places

DianaC

Hello,

I have one very large and complex polygon which I would like to divide to irregular subpolygons. The division is supposed to cut polygon in parts that are relatively narrower than their neighbours. Tried to use Identify Narrow Polygons to achieve this, but it only worked on some independent smaller polygons that happened to be on the same layer. Wanted to check the centerline of my main polygon, but got a warning 000072, which I suppose is the root of Identification failure. Tried to repair the polygon just in case, but got the same result.
Now I am thinking about doing some kind of magic with vertices and connecting lines, but this sounds like an unnecessarily complicated process.

So, maybe I can solve Narrow Polygon Identification tool problem somehow? Or maybe there are more useful tools for this I am not aware of?

1_Preview of original polygon.jpg

2_Desirable splitting pattern.jpg

SeaRM

I can suggest you a way how to do it, but it may be long. However, you can build a model with a sequence of tools and get a result faster.

 

1. Firstly, I would use XTools Pro Calculate Polygon Width tool and create a definition query to output points to get ones with the smallest distance to polygon bounds.

Maybe you have to filter additionally your points somehow, because there can be a lot of points with smallest distance.

2. I would need to get lines from initial polygons with XTools Pro Polygons to Polylines tool.

3. Then I would use XTools Pro Find Nearest Features tool with points from the first step as input features and lines from the second step as candidate features to create spider lines.

4. With XTools Pro Split Polygons I can split initial polygons with the spider lines from previous step.

5. If filtering after the first step is impossible, you can finally use XTools Pro Eliminate Slivers tool to merge tiny split polygons from the previous step to the bigger neighbors.