split features "error during processing"

[DarcyBoellstorff]

Hello,

I'm trying to split a large contour file using quarter quad boundaries. I'm getting an error "error during processing." Do you know what this error might be?

I have a feature class of 173 quad boundaries - all selected. The target feature is a contour feature class with about 3 million lines. 

I'm thinking it might have to do with there being so many features in the contour file? 

If so, is there another way to divide up this huge file?

Thank you

Darcy

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Dice or Simplify

Dice—Data Management toolbox | ArcGIS Desktop 

Simplify Line—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

basically split the area into chunks, or reduce the number of points that need to be handled

[JoshuaBixby]

In addition to Dan's suggestions, have you tried simply selecting one quarter-quad polygon to see if that works instead of trying 173 at one time?

[DarcyBoellstorff]

I haven't tried Dan's recommendations, but just selecting just one qquad resulted in the same error. I'll try Dan's recommendations now...

Thank you

Darcy

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Darcy, you don't show the contour3d layer in the map.  Is it within the qquad select or does it cover the whole visible area?  If this is the case, I would clip to a much smaller area to reduce the number of candidate contours

[DarcyBoellstorff]

I just didn't turn on the contours. The contours cover the entire qquad area as shown in my original image in my initial post. I just selected a qquad in the middle of the study area. 

I've already generalized the contours using a setting of 0.5 ft (these are 1 ft contours created from LiDAR) to what I thought was acceptable to the user. They want to retain as much detail as possible. 

I'm running Dice on a overly-generalized (really rough - generalized to 3 ft) version of the contours just to see where things stand. The highest vertex count is 5000.

I'm wondering if I subdivided the contours into quads, instead of qquads. This is a very unmanageable 10 Gig data set.