TIN Path/Name Character Limits

KellyWhitehead

Hi,

I have tried to find some (or any) documentation that describe limitations for the path/filename for TIN datasets. All I could find was one old forum post that mentioned a limit of 128 character, but I have found 118 seems to be the actual limit (making sure to remove any spaces in the path, of course!).

We are trying to set up an automated processing environment for our data (which includes TIN datasets), so any documentation that lists out any rules for TINs would be very helpful.

Thanks,
KW

curtvprice

We are trying to set up an automated processing environment for our data (which includes TIN datasets), so any documentation that lists out any rules for TINs would be very helpful.

For historical reasons, the naming rules for TINs are similar to the naming rules for coverages.

The long pathname issue isn't intrinsic to TINs -- many tools can be broken by excessively long pathnames.

You mentioned issues with spaces in paths. I have found with raster datasets that you can sometimes avoid problematic path issues by making sure your script passes layers, not datasets, as tool input (assuming the tool will accept a layer). This hides the path so it isn't accessed until it gets down to the arcobjects code inside the tool. In some situations this has allowed the paths to work when the raw dataset path has not. Unfortunately, i don't think there is a "Make Tin Layer" tool, though you can create a .lyr file from a TIN layer in ArcMap.