idea Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

mpboyle — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:04:59 GMT

When adding a "double" field type in ArcGIS Pros Feature Class Wizard, please allow precision and scale to be defined if using an enterprise geodatabase.

For example: if I add a double field to an enterprise geodatabase dataset within the wizard, the precision and scale can not be defined, and this results in them being 38,8. In most of our use cases this far exceeds any precision and scale we'd use and bloats the table. If I want to alter the precision and scale, I have to manually do it through the database interface like SSMS.

Re: Allow Precision and Scale to be Defined in New Field within Enterprise Geodatabase - Status changed to: Needs Clarification

SSWoodward — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:12:46 GMT

Thanks for the idea @mpboyle, What version of ArcGIS Pro are you using, and what part of the UI are you using to add a new field?

Are you able to successfully define the precision and scale in the fields view when adding a double field to an egdb?

Re: Allow Precision and Scale to be Defined in New Field within Enterprise Geodatabase

mpboyle — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 20:57:02 GMT

I'm using Pro 3.1.2

Yes, I can define the precision and scale when using the Field view, but when using the interface below this seems like extra steps.

I'd like the precision and scale to be options when creating a new feature class by right-clicking on a database connection and selecting New | Feature Class. Circled in green is the area where I'd like to see the precision and scale be options. If you create a text field through this interface you can define the max characters...something similar for double fields would be nice, in my opinion.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard - Status changed to: Open

SSWoodward — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 21:04:07 GMT

Thanks for getting back, @mpboyle. That makes total sense. I've updated the name of the idea for clarity.

Allow setting precision and scale in the Create Feature Class Wizard

ZachBodenner — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:52:32 GMT

When using the Create Feature Class wizard, including a float or double field does not provide the user with the opportunity to specify precision or scale. This would be useful because while disallowing this capability helps to circumvent other issues with these fields (such as the specified field type being ignored if the precision and scale are incompatible), it also makes it easy to overlook improper scale and precision settings if a user enters data into the feature class before they manually alter the defaults.

As it stands, default values for precision and scale are 6/1 for Float and 7/1 for double. If a user wants to adjust these values, they need to do it before any data is added to the feature class. It would be nice to specify the values during the creation of the feature class itself.

Re: Allow setting precision and scale in the Create Feature Class Wizard

SSWoodward — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:54:52 GMT

Thanks for the idea @ZachBodenner ,

I made a small edit to specify this Idea pertains to the create feature class wizard, instead of the GP tool. The wizard is an interface that combines many individual GP tools into a single workflow.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

Bud — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:22:38 GMT

Agreed. I want to create DOUBLE fields in the Create Table wizard where the precision is 15 and the scale is 2.

ArcGIS Pro 3.2.2

Bring back ability to edit numeric field precision in New Table/Feature Class import fields

RonnieRichards — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:55:40 GMT

In past releases of ArcGIS it was possible to modify the precision and scale for numeric fields when importing fields from another class during New Feature Class or New Table create screens.

In the latest versions of Pro 3.2.2 it appears the numeric precision and scale are not shown and the result seems to have issues maintaining the precision/scale from the import. It would be nice we could fix these issues before the tables get created incorrectly...

Please restore the ability to edit the numeric precision and scale, we can still edit text field lengths on the fields screen.

Thanks
Ronnie

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

RonnieRichards — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:10:59 GMT

I submitted this because ran into a bug in Pro 3.2.2 with all numerics fields from import being created as numeric(7,1)

Template Table used to import fields and precision and scale are not respected for any of them, resulting in all 7,1 values including a float data type! Please fix this stuff!!

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

GIS_Spellblade — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:13:55 GMT

Yeah I came to see if this was an idea already or not. Currently the only way to define numeric precision is through the Alter Field GP Tool or the Data Design GUI. I would argue that most users create feature classes utilizing the Create Feature Class / Create Table wizard. Based on @RonnieRichards comment above, it looks like this functionality was present in ArcGIS Desktop and just was not ported over to ArcGIS Pro.

https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-customize-numeric-data-precision-and-scale-in-ar-000029280

The current state of affairs is pretty burdensome as a field as to be newly added, properly defined, and then the old field tossed out. My organization has had to do a lot of re-work in terms of data clean-ups as our Analysts were unaware of the default values that were being created through the use of the Create [...] wizards.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

mthompson — Thu, 08 May 2025 19:10:29 GMT

This is absolutely insane that you can't change the settings of all the fields when you create a new feature class or table. I'm constantly baffled and disappointed with ArcGIS Pro.

The only tool I can find that even acknowledges scale/precision exists is the Add Field tool. Alter Field and Add Fields (plural) don't let you pick scale or precision, importing a full feature class changes them from whatever they were to 7/1, using Create Feature Class wizard and importing fields defaults to 7/1, using Create Feature Class wizard and adding a double field from scratch defaults to 7/1.

I have 20 fields I need to import and I'm going to have to create the feature class and then use the Add Field tool 20 times which is ridiculous when I could have just imported the fields in ArcMap in 5 seconds.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

SSWoodward — Thu, 08 May 2025 20:15:49 GMT

Thanks for sharing your frustration @mthompson. I totally get it, and this Idea is being examined by the team.

In the mean time, passing the class as a template to the Create Feature Class GP tool, and not the wizard, will bring along existing precision and scale values from the template class in to the newly created feature class in an enterprise geodatabase. It is accurate that the wizard does not provide functionality to set precision and scale in the current version of ArcGIS Pro. The wizard will set precision and scale to their default settings based on the datatype.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

mthompson — Fri, 09 May 2025 12:05:08 GMT

Thank you for the workaround, I tried using a file GDB feature class as a template to import into an enterprise GDB and it defaulted Double fields to 38/8 which will at least be able to accommodate my longer values.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

PhilippeChesselVdG — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:36:53 GMT

Same issue with a Enterprise Géodatabase (ORacle 19.x, géodatabase sde 10.9.1 ou 11.3_3.3.4)

And ArcGIS Pro 3.3.4

The default of the Float data type in the database is created as 6.1

The default of the Double data type in the database is created as 7.1

This is problematic as soon as you want to create décimal fields like coordinates 😞

The 6.1 and 7.1 defaults are not visible on screen when creating the feature class

Please, we need then to be able to modify while creating Double end Float fields the scale/precision

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

PhilippeChesselVdG — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 13:20:19 GMT

Same comment again, with ArcGIS Pro 2.9 to 3.3 migration, with this behavior of default Double as (7.1) and FLoat as (6.1) numerics.

The default is so useless when a user think of creating Double or Float (latitude, longitude, X, Y fields, ...)

And having to tell the end users that they have to use "Add Field" wizard for every field of the new class or table is not comfortable.

The Field Designer does not allow to modifiy the precision/scale of existing fields.

Is there eventually other ways ?

Thanks

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

Michele_Hosking — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 21:28:45 GMT

This is so frustrating - who thought 7/1 was a good default? I even tried copying my feature class from enterprise to a fgdb to change the precision - precision doesn't even show then. You can't even use the Create Feature Class wizard and use a template to pull in the fields because it just uses the same as the template without the opportunity to change anything. I'm trying to fix one field out of 44 in a feature class. What - I have to create it with no fields and put in 44 fields again manually in order to sort this? Why was this functionality ever removed? Why was the default for double made 7/1? Does anyone who makes these decisions actually do any real work? It so frustrating.

Oh and P.S - you can't use the Export Feature Class to Feature Class either....

And while we are on the subject - why has the max length of a field name dropped from 30 to 29 characters? 'Cos I'm currently re-making my feature class from scratch and I can't even copy in a field name that already exists in a current feature class as it has 30 characters - now I have to change the name of a field because it won't fit!!! OMG - it just gets worse - 'cos this feature class is everywhere. You know the hoops I have to jump through if a field name changes? And don't quote me on this but I'm pretty sure a few years ago (maybe ArcMap??) the max field name length used to be 31.

Ok - because of the field length issue above this is what I have to do to get around everything...

Export fc to fc and remove offending field in the process (in enterprise 'cos you can't even see the precision of a new double field in a fgdb let alone change it)
Add the field into the fc copy - but now - you know - the field is at the end of the list of fields and not where it's supposed to be so...
Export the fc copy to fc copy 2 and move the field in the process
Truncate and append the data from the original fc to copy 2 as you've lost all the data in the offending field
delete the original and copy 1
rename copy 2

After all that when I changed the precision to 10/2 it's actually changed it to 38/8. Oh well - small wins I guess....

What a palaver.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

RonnieRichards — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:55:47 GMT

@Michele_Hosking Agreed this is frustrating! To provide a little more background to some of what you encountered:

File, Mobile Geodatabases and GeoPackages do not technically have decimal data types with precision, they are all considered float which is why you get the 38,8 definition.

However the experience of designing data models in the Enterprise geodatabase has been completely destroyed. Creating data models using templates used to be a very productive workflow, now it no longer works due to this 7.1 madness. At our organization we now create all of our data models in unregistered tables using the RDBMS tools and then register them with the geodatabase when confirmed.

Any changes to these then encounter all of the issues you and others shared on this thread. We use backend rdbms tools to modify column definitions in non-versioned environments due to all of the hoops required using Pro management tools.

Educating new users and staff with the work arounds and other approaches make very little sense, please just fix this tool to work like it used to allowing users to alter decimal precision where applicable.

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

Michele_Hosking — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 19:58:38 GMT

@RonnieRichards - thanks for the suggestion. I might try RDBMS tools as well. The world is a funny place. Things that work get broken and things that are broken are never fixed. Entropy I guess.....

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

SSWoodward — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:37:46 GMT

Thanks everyone for continuing to share your feedback.

@Michele_Hosking At ArcGIS Pro 3.5 the maximum field name length has been increased to 128 or the maximum allowed by the underlying databased platform, whichever is less. This should address the naming issue you have shared. What's new in 3.5

@RonnieRichards is correct, there is no concept of user defined scale or precision in geodatabases other than enterprise geodatabases.

@RonnieRichards you also shared that;

"Creating data models using templates used to be a very productive workflow, now it no longer works due to this 7.1 madness"

Can you share the version of ArcGIS Pro where this workflow changed for you? Or was this a workflow in ArcMap that is now disrupted on a migration to ArcGIS Pro?

Re: Allow Field Precision and Scale to be Defined in Feature Class Wizard

mpboyle — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 21:02:10 GMT

@SSWoodward

To the best of my knowledge, having the ability to define precision and scale, specifically on the Create New Feature Class/Table interface has NEVER been available in Pro.

This IS available in ArcMap/Catalog, and as many commentors have mentioned, having this ability seems rather simple given that it's available in ArcMap/Catalog and for certain Pro tools (ex: Add Field tool), and its omission is frustrating, especially going on 10 years of having Pro.

Pro Create New Feature Class Interface --- this is an enterprise geodatabase --- no ability to define precision and scale in the field properties

ArcCatalog Create New Feature Class Interface --- same enterprise geodatabase as above --- ability to define precision and scale

Pro Add Field tool --- Precision and Scale ARE available