auto complete not working correctly

MennoNijhuis1 · ‎04-05-2013

I am digitising a map in ArcMap 10.0 SP 2 with a few hundred polygons. I use auto complete polygons to avoid drawing all the lines twice. I use it using both straight segment and trace (along another layer) to draw the lines.
Most polygons end up right, but some aren't created when I finish drawing. Also when trying again and making sure to go from existing polygons' vertices or crossing polygons' boundaries the polygon won't draw.
A workaround I found is drawing the polygon in parts. But still, one part may draw and the other may not. I then draw even smaller parts and smaller parts until it works. Eventually I fill the polygon with smaller parts (sometimes 2, sometimes 20) and merge them, but it is costing me a lot of time circumventing around unwanted and strange ArcMap behaviour.
I looked up various other posts and errors about auto-complete. The main one if found was about the polygon drawn not being complete visible, but I tried zooming out until I saw the polygon drawn and all the adjacent polygons in full and it still wouldn't draw. Also some polygons will draw regardless of zoomlevel.

Anyone encounter this before and found a (better) way to deal with it?

RobertBorchert · ‎04-05-2013

Switch to Classic Snapping.

also you may have issues if you are working with polygons that are in a topology.

Are you finishing the auto complete by hitting the F2 button? I just digitized a parcel and i either hit F2 or double click on the last point.

I am digitising a map in ArcMap 10.0 SP 2 with a few hundred polygons. I use auto complete polygons to avoid drawing all the lines twice. I use it using both straight segment and trace (along another layer) to draw the lines.
Most polygons end up right, but some aren't created when I finish drawing. Also when trying again and making sure to go from existing polygons' vertices or crossing polygons' boundaries the polygon won't draw.
A workaround I found is drawing the polygon in parts. But still, one part may draw and the other may not. I then draw even smaller parts and smaller parts until it works. Eventually I fill the polygon with smaller parts (sometimes 2, sometimes 20) and merge them, but it is costing me a lot of time circumventing around unwanted and strange ArcMap behaviour.
I looked up various other posts and errors about auto-complete. The main one if found was about the polygon drawn not being complete visible, but I tried zooming out until I saw the polygon drawn and all the adjacent polygons in full and it still wouldn't draw. Also some polygons will draw regardless of zoomlevel.

Anyone encounter this before and found a (better) way to deal with it?

TiffanyPuett · ‎04-08-2013

Haven't had any problems working with a topology. I have experienced certain poly building problems that seem to be related to the number of vertices or the number of intersecting polys (IE Nodes) that you have.

For example if either the new feature or the existing features have a lot of vertices, ArcMap seems to have a hard time processing that into a poly unless you trace the entire boundary. Likewise, that number seems even lower when you have a large number of polys that intersect the new poly on its boundary. See the circled intersections on the attached graphic. I'm not exactly sure at what number things break down, but there may be a registry setting you can tweak.

A similar thing happens when you try to create polys from lines using Construct Polygons. Thus, I don't exactly know a workaround.

I do however have a suggestion. You might try using a line featureclass to "Construct" your polys instead of auto-complete. That way if it fails, you have the line feature as a backup and don't have go through and click the same points all over again.

MennoNijhuis1 · ‎04-09-2013

@rborchert

Both F2 and double click yield the same result, also classic snapping does not help.

@tiffanypuett

No the features are not in a topology.
The nodes suggestion might be a correct one, as smaller polygons (which have less nodes), do get constructed. Tracing the whole polygon does indeed construct it. I did not have problems with some polygons with a lot of vertices however. I'd rather not edit the registry, as my admin won't like it, and because I think it should work normal.

Some fiddling around and what I found out is that the extent of the dataframe does matter after all as well.

In situation 1 I am unable to construct polygons using autocomplete at lines 2, 3 and 4. When I move the dataframe view to situation 2, all construction lines prove no problem at all. Even when I start drawing along line 3, move the data frame to situation 2, then finish, it works.

Both, thanks for your reply 🙂
I think this should be reported as a bug, which I will do, and now I have quite some info to back it up.

MennoNijhuis1 · ‎04-19-2013

Just to let you guys know: I've submitted the bug through ESRI UK and they're taking it to ESRI Inc.

MalteKnoche · ‎04-30-2013

I had the same problem. Finally I could identify the/one reason.
I had one big polygon around the area to be digitized (here: the watershed boundary). Inside I wanted to digitize a hydro-geological map and use the watershed boundary as outer boundary applying the "auto complete polygon" tool. This did not work, neither completing polygons to the outer boundary nor to any other polygon.
After I deleted the outer boundary from the attribute table, the auto complete polygon tool worked fine for completing adjacent polygons.

MennoNijhuis1 · ‎05-03-2013

I had the same problem. Finally I could identify the/one reason.
I had one big polygon around the area to be digitized (here: the watershed boundary). Inside I wanted to digitize a hydro-geological map and use the watershed boundary as outer boundary applying the "auto complete polygon" tool. This did not work, neither completing polygons to the outer boundary nor to any other polygon.
After I deleted the outer boundary from the attribute table, the auto complete polygon tool worked fine for completing adjacent polygons.

I guess from your story that the "outer boundary" is a polygon covering you whole watershed. This will not work with auto-complete as you can't use it to build polygons on top of each other.

RobertBorchert · ‎05-03-2013

What I have done when digitizing large and small plats now is I draw a single large polygon around the outside border of the plat.

I then use the Cut Polygon tool, classic snapping to parcel Vertex and Edge and simply whip through and cut the parcels out. As it keeps part of the polygon selected it is actually very quick. no slivers

JessicaBarnabei · ‎06-24-2013

I have been having the same trouble. I found this knowledge base article:
http://support.esri.com/fr/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/26222
It appears that this has been a problem for a while. This was the issue for me.... I had 4 large polygons that made up the northern edge of the one I was creating. I wanted to use the Auto Complete Polygon. It would disappear every time I double clicked or hit finish. So after reading the above bug article....I tried zooming in on my area of interest. Started my polygon and created the new boundary and when I got to the end where it met with the edge of the other polygon (that made up the northern edge) I clicked once, zoomed out so that all of the polys were in the screen, and hit F2 or right clicked and hit finish sketch. It worked.
Hope this helps. But this is a bug, hopefully it will get fixed soon.

LisaAldrian · ‎09-14-2013

Hei,
I just got kind of the same problem too - when I'm trying to use the auto-complete polygon it completes to a huge non-existing polygon around. This is not happening with all polygons - in most areas on the layer I'm editing it is working just fine, but in some not - does anybody have suggestions what I'm doing wrong?

thanks,
Lisa