Downsides of using Shapefiles vs "regular" FeatureClass/FeatureLayer

[RehmSoftware]

Hey,

as I mentioned in an older post, I have quite some performance issues with ArcGIS Pro. Especially when I have to create like 800k polygons or something and put them on a layer it takes ages.

However, I found out that it is much much faster to create a Shapefile (with the DotSpatial library) that contains the polygons and then I can simply add the Shapefile to the project. Speedup is like factor 20.

Now, performance wise I actually have no choice going down this road but I wonder if there are any negative impacts that I don't know of yet? Are there any downsides of shapefiles vs using regular FeatureClasses/FeatureLayers that are stored in the ArcGIS project? Note that I rarely have to modify these objects individually.. instead all of the 800k polygons are nuked and created from scratch when changes are necessary.

Thanks in advance

Christian

[DanPatterson · Accepted solution]

This pretty well sums it up

Geoprocessing considerations for shapefile output—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation 

but if you are just creating them and not doing anything analysis/geoprocessing wise, then you will have to evaluate it in that light.  Be aware of the file size limit should your 800K polygon approach that limit

[RehmSoftware]

Hi Dan,

you're right, that pretty much sums it up, thanks a lot. I think I can live with these limitations especially since my polygons are actually triangles so I think I can fit around 20 million triangles into the shapefile.

Again, I'd rather not use shapefiles but since creating so many objects is super slow for regular FeatureClasses/FeatureLayers in the ArcGIS Pro project, I've got no other apparent choice..

Best regards

Christian