Invalid geometry?!!!

[atousamarzban]

Dear All,

I am working on my project as urban planner research student on HO chi Minh City in Vietnam. I took the high resolution google earth map by Universal map downloader software, I added in Arcmap, and when I am creating the shapefile for drawing poligon there is an error said:" the feature could not create, the geometry is invalid"

Is anyone knows how can I solve this problem?

I restart the programm too many times, also I tried repair geometry in Arctool!

But nothing changed.

Please guide me how can I solve this.

Bests,

[DanPatterson_Retired]

what type of geometry? point, polyline, polygon?  

can you create other geometries?

do you have a defined coordinate system?

since you are creating a shapefile, are you saving it to a local disk and not a usb drive or some other location?

details would help

[atousamarzban]

Actually I started to create the Polygon.

I have a defined Coordinate system after georefrencing my google earth base map picture. I defined it, Then I defined the same for the shapefile as well!

I am saving it on my computer folders, not on Usb!

I can create Point and Polyline, just with polygon I have this problem!

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

• When you georeferenced the basemap image, where did you get it and what was it defined as?
• What was the original coordinate system?
• It sounds like it is trying to create geometry outside of the possible range of values one would expect for that coordinate system
• I am assuming that you tried to make a simple shape, like a rectangle or an irregular polygon clicking around...preferably in a clockwise direction to be consistent with the resultant ordering of the polygon vertices...  Did that work fine? 
• Have you tried saving one polygon, saving the edits then stopping edits, then restart?  Or does it fail right away

trying to nail it down

[atousamarzban]

I georefrenced it according to the lat and lon that I had. the I define the project coordinate system is: WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_48N

Actually I am going to draw simple shapes like rectangle, as well as shape of the water body in the city!

I am doing the shape clockwise and it doesn't work for the small polygons! it is ridiculous that when I make a big and simple polygon like rectangle that it is really huge it works, but when I am going to draw the real shapes like the shapes of buildings or river, I cannot because it doesn't allow me and before finishing the drawing the error appears.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

If the coordinates were in lat long, you just can't define them in another coordinate system...You have to project them when you are done.  This step is commonly missed.  You cannot make something into what you want it to be...it must be created first then changed into something new via the projection process.

So do your digitizing in whatever coordinate system, you base image is in.  When you are done you can use the Data Management Tools, Projections and Transformations toolset, Project tool .... NOT the Define Projection.

[atousamarzban]

Thank you so much for letting me know and for your guidance.

Hopefully It gonna work in this way.

Thanks a lot

[VinceAngelo]

Another issue is that of the coordinate reference definition.  If you've mashed something together, you might have an X/Y precision of which is larger than the size of your features.  One way to detect this is if you make rectangles of progressively smaller area (10% shrinkage) and look to see if they start distorting before collapsing completely.

[TimonWutte]

Hello,

I have this problem suddenly. I am almost done with all my Features and suddenly, after creating a new Shapefile i can't create small polygons anymore "Geometry is invalid". What can i do here?

I georeferenced two pictures from Google Earth and it worked totally fine all day!

[GulNawaz]

According to my thinking and analysis. (The image which is geo refered must has Geographic reference system (GCS) then you will be able to draw correct polygons upon them.. otherwise you will not)