topic Re: Near tools returns null in Geoprocessing Questions

Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:37:13 GMT

Hello. I used Near tool in ArcMap 10.3 to calculate the nearest distance between the county center and US time zone boundaries. But I got all the fields with a null value. The county center is calculated by following the instruction here: https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000009381. And I also add a time zone layer by searching online. However, when I use the Near tool to calculate the nearest distance from each county center to time zone boundaries, each field returns null.

I couldn't figure out a way to fix that. Any hints are appreciated. Thank you so much!

Re: Near tools returns null

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:50:10 GMT

Near—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

NEAR_FC
The catalog path to the feature class that contains the near feature. This field is only added to the output table if multiple Near Features are specified. If no near feature is found, the value will be empty string or null.

Are all the layers in the same coordinate system?

And it appears you specified multiple Near Features?

An online layer is probably not in the same coordinate system as your data are.

Re: Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:55:06 GMT

Thank you so much for your reply!

I am not sure about the system. But if I download the time zone layer to my computer and use this downloaded one, will they in the same coordinate system?

And I only want the distance from the county center to the nearest time zone boundary. Is that a problem?

Re: Near tools returns null

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 16:57:52 GMT

Sammi, nothing automatically gets put into the same coordinate system. Find out what the coordinate systems are, and if needed use the Project Tool (in Data management, projections and transformations toolset) to project the downloaded one into the coordinate system of your main data

Re: Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:01:45 GMT

Got you! I will do some research about the coordinate system and then redo the process. Will keep you posted. Thank you so much!

Re: Near tools returns null

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:07:42 GMT

Good luck Sammi and welcome to GeoNet

Re: Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:31:02 GMT

Hi Dan, I find out that their coordinate systems are:

GCS_WGS_1984

It seems like they are in the same coordinate system. Still not sure what the problem is....

Re: Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 17:46:35 GMT

And now when I try to generate near the table, just several has numbers, and all others are 0.

Re: Near tools returns null

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 21:20:11 GMT

0 is the distance... the closest is inside

Re: Near tools returns null

SammiFan — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 18:44:08 GMT

That's possible. Then I guess I would like to ask is it possible to calculate the shortest distance between the point and the nearest time zone and the point is not located in the time zone?

Thank you!

Re: Near tools returns null

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 20:47:41 GMT

via scripting

Near—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

the last example