topic Re: Clip by latitude in Data Management Questions

Clip by latitude

LauraDugan — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:46:21 GMT

This is probably an easy thing to do, but I'm stuck trying to figure out how to do it. Basically, I want to clip a shapefile of the UK by latitude so that I end up with a new polygon that is the 50-52 degree band of the UK. How can I do this? The clip tool requires an input file to clip by.

Thanks!
Laura

Re: Clip by latitude

JoeBorgione — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:03:55 GMT

This is probably an easy thing to do, but I'm stuck trying to figure out how to do it. Basically, I want to clip a shapefile of the UK by latitude so that I end up with a new polygon that is the 50-52 degree band of the UK. How can I do this? The clip tool requires an input file to clip by.

Thanks!
Laura

You'll need to create a polygon feature class that uses to 50 and 52 degree latitude lines as the south and north edges, and the east and west edges would be what ever you need as well. This new polygon is what you'll use to clip the input featureclass by.

Re: Clip by latitude

LauraDugan — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:52:02 GMT

Thank-you for responding, Joe. So, I used the 'Create Feature Class' tool in the 'Data Management' toolbox to create a polygon feature and set the processing extent to 50 and 52 south and north respectively and -7 and 3 west and east in the 'Environments' window. I left all the other defaults as they were. The process ran and a shapefile was created, though, it did not produce a visual polygon on the map. I then used this file to clip my shapefile of the UK but got an error message that the output was empty (error 000117). Any idea where I'm going wrong?

Thanks so much!
Laura

Re: Clip by latitude

JoeBorgione — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:31:34 GMT

Thank-you for responding, Joe. So, I used the 'Create Feature Class' tool in the 'Data Management' toolbox to create a polygon feature and set the processing extent to 50 and 52 south and north respectively and -7 and 3 west and east in the 'Environments' window. I left all the other defaults as they were. The process ran and a shapefile was created, though, it did not produce a visual polygon on the map. I then used this file to clip my shapefile of the UK but got an error message that the output was empty (error 000117). Any idea where I'm going wrong?

Thanks so much!
Laura

Yep; you created a feature class, but you haven't created any geometry for the feature class. Try this:

In ArcCatalog, delete the empty polygon feature class you tried to create.

Next, staying in ArcCatalog, create a new polygon feature class. I prefer some flavor of geodatabase feature class rather than a shapefile. Give this new feature class the same spatial reference as the feature class you wish to clip.

Close Catalog and open ArcMap. Add the feature class you want to clip. Add the newly created, but empty polygon feature class. Hopefully you have a line feature class of lat/long you can add as well. Start an editing session with your [so-far empty] new feature class as the target. Using the lat/long lines as your guide, create the polygon you want.

Once you have it, stop editing and save changes.

Clip what you want with what you just built.

Make sense?