My problem is that the output to my Raster to Polygon is too complex and large in file size. How do I simplify it so it is more manageable to share, display, and work with as a feature class and as a shapefile?
Details: ArcGIS Pro 2.8
The output from the raster to polygon is so complex and the file size seems much larger than it needs to be. How do I simplify my feature class output so it is more manageable to share, display, and work with?
Is it a matter of adjusting parameters on the tools in my process? Or is there a generalizing tool that is best suited?
Thanks for your consideration!
It all depends on your raster, but you may want to generalize the raster before converting to vector
An overview of the Generalization toolset—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
has lots of tools to generalize, for instance
Aggregate (Spatial Analyst)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
but do the generalization on the raster before reclassification.
Majority Filter (Spatial Analyst)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
can get rid of fiddly-bits that are small and will simplify this to
The options are there, the one, or process, that works best for your may take some experimentation. These are but two examples
Another solution is don't write it to a shapefile. These are a very old format, persisting, in my opinion because they have been adopted by the open source community.
A file geodatabase is superior, faster and you can even compress the data into a smaller file size.
Another thing to try is go the Environment Settings for the Slope GP tool and set the Cell Size to a higher value like 5 m. Rerun your workflow and save it out to file geodatabase raster dataset. From there, run the Raster to Polygon GP tool and do not check "Simplify Features" I think you'll get a better output.
Hi Daniel
Have you tried the tool's 'simplify' option?
Simplify polygons (Optional) | Determines if the output polygons will be smoothed into simpler shapes or conform to the input raster's cell edges.
| Boolean |
Also, the Create Multipart Features option will reduce the number of separate features by combining outer loops containing the same cell attribute into a single feature containing a multi-part polygon.
James TenBrink
spatial analyst team