topic Re: Clip not working in Geoprocessing Questions

Clip not working

FaithWebster — Mon, 21 May 2018 23:51:41 GMT

I have a peculiar problem. The clip tool is simply not running. My results say that the tool ran, but the output isn't created, and there are no messages.

I have moved all the data into the same geodatabase, and it's all in the same projection. I welcome any suggestions to what could be going on because I am at a loss.

Thank you GeoNet Community!

Re: Clip not working

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 22 May 2018 00:54:09 GMT

All featureclasses, all in the same coordinate system for sure (?!)

Try a select by attribute and see if that works.

Make sure that you don't have any selections if you are expecting a complete clip.

And the clipping geometry is a polygon which can be used to clip, polylines, polygons or points

Re: Clip not working

VinceAngelo — Tue, 22 May 2018 01:10:21 GMT

If your polygons have invalid ring geometry, Clip may produce bizarre results.

Try verifying both your Input and Clip layers with CheckGeometry_management

- V

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Wed, 23 May 2018 15:56:23 GMT

I double checked, and yes all of the data is in the same projection, and the input and clip features are in the same file geodatabase. I can try a select by location... but i'm not sure a select by attribute would do much. I am clipping line features using a polygon. I honestly have no idea what the issue is.

Thank you for your help.

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Wed, 23 May 2018 15:57:30 GMT

I will try that, but my clipping layer only has a single polygon, so no gaps or slivers or overlaps are possible...

Re: Clip not working

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 23 May 2018 17:04:57 GMT

Checking the projection is one thing, but it is best to look at the numbers for both layer's 'extent'... In order to clip or intersect or any of the 'overlay' tools, the extents must intersect. if the bounding box of the layer being used to 'clip' the geometry doesn't overlap what is to be clipped, then nothing will occur.

Re: Clip not working

VinceAngelo — Wed, 23 May 2018 18:15:20 GMT

The polygon can still be invalid in other ways (e.g., self-intersection).

- V

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Wed, 23 May 2018 20:03:40 GMT

So I tried just selecting by location, and then I was going to make a layer from selected features, but I got another weird result:

I think I might have a problem with ArcGIS...

Re: Clip not working

VinceAngelo — Wed, 23 May 2018 20:35:55 GMT

Uninstall/reinstall couldn't hurt, but I expect the problem is with the data, not the software.

- V

Re: Clip not working

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 23 May 2018 20:47:34 GMT

Faith... did you run a Check Geometry on the data as Vince suggested?

You might actually want to make a copy to a local simple folder in a test geodatabase there first.

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Wed, 23 May 2018 21:35:59 GMT

The check geometry has the same problem as clip. it is showing in results as ran, but without messages, and no output in the database.

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Wed, 23 May 2018 21:49:40 GMT

I ran a repair on ArcGIS, and the clip ran as expected. Thank you guys for your help, as always.

Re: Clip not working

JasonThomas1 — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 16:19:55 GMT

I am having the same problem with multiple tools in the toolbox. It happens on completely different datasets. It happens regardless of coordinate system matching. It happens on 3 different PCs in our office. It is usually fixable by rebooting PC but only temporarily - so it gets very frustrating. Closing and restarting ArcGIS doesn't help. Right now it's happening with Extract by Mask (for raster) but there have been about 10 tools doing this. It's happening on 10.5.1 right now and also happened on previous version of ArcMap and on previous PC to the one I got recently. The exact opposite problem also occurs (sometimes it generates and error and says it couldn't complete process, but it actually generated a completely valid output in the folder).

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 17:11:57 GMT

Its a problem that i'm still having. running a repair works for a few days though... it seems to happen more if it's been a day or since i've restated my pc.

Re: Clip not working

JasonThomas1 — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:58:07 GMT

Faith, what do you mean by running a repair? I'm curious to try same thing here. We just upgraded to 10.6.1 and I was disappointed to find that the problem is still happening on a daily basis for me. And I still have to reboot my machine every time to fix it. It has become a big time consumer. It's interesting that you have also been experiencing the issue for many months and how recent you restarted also affects you. You wouldn't happen to be using a cloud backup appliance system like Panzura would you?

Re: Clip not working

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:15:55 GMT

Repair.... Got to Windows Control panel, Add/Remove Programs, select arcmap and a 'Repair' will be one of the options

Re: Clip not working

Chiu-Wen__JoAnne_Ray — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 21:31:37 GMT

How to run a repair on ArcGIS?

Re: Clip not working

FaithWebster — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 19:39:33 GMT

see Dan Patterson's comment above. You right click on ArcGIS from the programs list in the control panel.

Re: Clip not working

KeithAddison1 — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 15:17:48 GMT

GDBs suffer from all kinds of geoprocessing failures. Move the data to shapefiles.

Re: Clip not working

VinceAngelo — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 14:52:13 GMT

I have to point out that shapefiles are not an acceptable substitute for users with numeric NULLs, fieldnames longer than 10 characters, UTF-16 strings, strings exceeding 254 charcters, BLOB data, datetime fields with higher than day resolution, topologies, feature datasets, domains,.... Establishing correct spatial reference metadata can sometimes be a challenge, but getting the values right is much easier than trying to get by with a data format, created in the early 1990s, which lacks so many modern features.

- V