Location Allocation issue

Question

When using Location Allocation in Network Analyst, is there a maximum number of Facilities and/or Demand Points?  I am trying to solve using Target Market Share. I have 3,717 Facilities and 90,622 Demand Points.  Every time I run the analysis, I receive a out of memory error.  My laptop has 32gb of RAM.  I am trying to determine if I am getting this error because I am hitting some sort of limitation within the tool or if this is truly a RAM issue.

JaySandhu · Answer

How many facilities are you solving for? Do you have a cutoff in place? If you do not have a cutoff to limit how far the facilities should look for demand, it will end up computing the entire distance matrix of 3,717 Facilities by 90,622 demand. This means a distance matrix with 367 million entries. It should work in Pro with 32 GB or RAM. But will take a while to compute and analyze. So do consider putting a meaningful distance or time cutoff to get  faster results.

Jay Sandhu

AnnChaney · Answer

Yes, we are still using ArcMap but I do have ArcGIS Pro installed.  I will try to run it there.  Thanks for the tip!

Melinda Morang · Answer

You haven't said whether you're using ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro.  If you're using ArcMap, then I am not surprised you're getting a memory error.  ArcMap is an older 32-bit application that cannot use your system's full memory resources.  If this is the case for you, I suggest you upgrade to ArcGIS Pro and try solving the problem there.  Pro is a newer 64-bit application that can handle large problems much better.

If that doesn't work either, you might want to check out this DevSummit presentation about solving large network analysis problems:

Solving Large Problems video

Solving Large Problems downloads