ArcGIS Online simplifies curves.

Sean_Wray

I am posting here instead of the AGOL community in the hopes that I can get some more traction on this subject. It seems to me that this might be a common problem that folks in this community might run into often. On AGOL, curved lines are being simplified and not being displayed as curves at all. Losing detail on curves like this should not be acceptable. It makes us look like we are doing sloppy work. When making maps with design files, they need to be reflected back as they were created. 

Hopefully, there is a work-around or a fix for this problem. There are more/better examples of this in the link I posted below.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-online-questions/arcgis-online-not-displaying-curves-correctly/td-p/1537264

 

MicahCallough-Esri

ArcGIS Online has supported true curves (circular arcs) since the June 2024 release.  (See https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/announcements/whats-new-arcgis-online-june-2024)

 

“True curve features...Hosted feature layers can now store true curve features. You can control whether these features are editable and, if so, if editing is restricted to only those clients that can edit them without overwriting them with features that aren’t true curves. See Manage hosted feature layer editing for information about these settings.”

 

There are some limitations, for example, full support depends on the client.  For example, the Web Editor does not support curves.  So if you edit on the web, the curves will be tessellated.  They can display them, but cannot edit them. But you’ll see circular arcs supported on ArcGIS Online-hosted feature layers in tools like ArcGIS for AutoCAD. 

 

Also, ArcGIS Enterprise layers (by reference, not hosted) have robust true curve support. So, you can work with this content via services through ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS for AutoCAD without running into densification.