Intersect Tool Fail - ERROR 160196: Invalid Topology

[Thomask_gridmetrics]

I am using ArcGIS Pro 2.7.1 on a pc with good technical specs.

I am attempting to run the Intersect (Analysis) tool between two layers. One layer contains polygon county shapes for the contiguous United States, and the other contains a single polygon, created by a buffer for several hundred thousand points.

The tool repeatedly fails while "Assembling Features", giving "ERROR 160196: Invalid Topology".

What strategies can I take the avoid this error and generate the intersect? Note, the error inspector does not find any topology errors, and the input layer appears as expected. I have tried restarting.  I was able to run an identical process with an input layer of a 1500 meter buffer, with a two minute runtime. The 500 meter buffer always fails.

[DanPatterson]

I would run a Check Geometry and a Repair Geometry if necessary on both sets of data first.

Second, no a panacea for potential problems, but read this link carefully

Pairwise Intersect (Analysis)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

[Mary_Murphy]

Are both layers (and the map) using the same coordinate system?

How many features are we talking? Does it work with, say, half the dataset(s)?

[ChrisBehee1]

I have same issue.  V2.7.1 intersect with two polygon featureclasses.  One has about 450 polys (file gdb), the other is our countywide parcel fabric (from an SDE server).  Both datasets and dataframe are same projection info.  Works if I have parcel layer with def query (using Tshp Sec Rng references) that keeps record count below about 15,000 parcels.  Anything more than that and it fails with the same 160196 Invalid Topology error.  Have tried it with different geographic areas of our parcel fabric and it fails at different polygon count thresholds, but typically somewhere between 10,000-20,000 records.

[ChrisBehee1]

Since I've only got two input datasets I ended up using PairwiseIntersect in my script.  It works for this process just fine.  Still don't know why regular Intersect fails on this combination of data.

[DanPatterson]

The help topic on Pairwise lists the advantages over regular intersect.

[Craig_Schellenbach]

Check for Null or 0's in your Shape fields.