Trace a Polyline to create a Polygon

[BrianO_keefe]

I received DWG CAD Files for a large area. Huge subdivision.
I have converted the entire thing to a personal database, inside a dataset named after the subdivision.
In the Polyline Feature Class I have selected a parking lot. It is made up of Lines, Arcs and Polylines.
I have just the outline selected.
I then click on my WORK Personal Geodatabase, on the Polygon Feature Class called L_Footprint, I select the Template for Parking Lot Footprint, I click on TRACE.

As soon as I click on any of these lines I get a beep sounds and nothing.
I've rebooted, I've merged all the lines together, I've exploded them apart.
Nothing seems to allow me to trace this?!

I have ArcView so I can't run the Polyline to Polygon tool (wrong license).

Here's the kicker.
I just did this entire process without a flaw on THREE OTHER SUBDIVISIONS!

I'm in the middle of working up a solution for getting CAD Files into our system as quickly as possible. I figured out a basic workflow and started using it successfully.
Then suddenly... wham! Nothing works.
I have NO intention of manually tracing these lines.
There are over 70,000 of them.
No thank you.

Not being able to convert to Polygon is bad enough (shame on ESRI for making that an ArcEditor versus ArcView option!)... but not being able to work this is really frustrating me...

Anyone have any ideas?

[HardolphWasteneys]

Brian,

there are several ArcView 9.2, 9.3, 10 options for creating polygons directly from your polylines, even 70,000 of them all at once, they are just not documented much by ESRI, well, maybe not at all.

Here's a couple of recent threads where I outlined some methods:

http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/6786-polyline-to-polygon?highlight=polygon
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/26967-Creating-polygons-from-lines?highlight=polygon

The one additional issue with CAD derived material is making sure they are translated into GIS polylines otherwise they may not be editable or selectable.
However, assuming you have that covered (check the CAD subforum if not) you can either use a couple of scripts found in Toolbox Samples in 9.3 ("Write Features to Text File" and "Create Features from Text File" with a quick edit of the header line in the .txt file from "polyline" to "polygon" in between running the scripts) or use the method I've outlined that uses Task: Auto-complete and the sketch tool. Both methods are quite simple, the latter more so in a normal editing workflow and can be used across several polyline Feature Classes simultaneously.

Here's another thread with more detailed instructions for polygons and transferring attributes from, in this case, contour lines, to created polygons, but perhaps you can use a similar method for your subdivision if the polyline files have significant attribute material.

http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/30638-How-to-convert-rain-contour-to-polygon?highlight=polygon

and the deprecated location of the script files in ArcGIS 10

http://resources.arcgis.com/gallery/file/geoprocessing/details?entryID=F25C5576-1422-2418-A060-04188...

Try some of that and if you have a more specific problem let me know and I'll paste something in to this thread. You're on the right track making a merged copy of the polylines; that's what I usually do in a scatch feature class to preserve my original polylines with their respective visual attributes if I use the Auto-Complete method.

good luck,

Hardolph

[BrianO_keefe]

Try some of that and if you have a more specific problem let me know

I don't know that I would call it a problem. But I 'twiddled' with some of the options you mentioned. Here is what I have found...

• If I select the object I want to trace, then set the Trace Options to "Trace selected features," if I move on to other objects that are not selected, and they would not let me trace them prior, suddenly I can trace them. It's like switching that switch kick-starts the Trace Engine and it'll run like it's supposed to suddenly.


• If I am trying to trace and getting nowhere, if I choose NOT Trace, but the "Straight Segment" option and start drawing along a straight line, sometimes I can switch over to Trace mode and it'll work. This is even on lines that I had tried to trace already and they wouldn't.


• If I am in EDIT mode for 'CAD Data : Paving Cut' and I select - Edit Features -> Start Editing on the 'Feature Class : Parking Lot' sometimes it will let me trace and other times it won't. And I've chosen UNDO to see if it would work normally and it still won't. So this isn't a case of I could have traced it normally, because when I undo past my trace, and try to trace it normally, it won't. But if I do the jerry-rigged move of Edit Features -> Start Editing (CAD Data) then switch to Edit Features -> Start Editing (Parking Lot) boom... it works.

It's starting to feel more like Voodoo to get the trace thing to do what I want. *shrugs*
It works now tho...

Thank you for your help, I don't think I would be here if I hadn't tried those options.

[HardolphWasteneys]

Brian, 

I don't recommend TRACING the polyline features, just convert them. Unless you are making an offset line it is unecessary.

Also not familiar with TRACE OPTIONS;  they only appear to be available in the UTILITY NETWORK ANALYST Toolbar, which may mean someone has set up something on your machine to use them in a ?template.   Maybe the selection problem is because the tool is looking for networks?

I'm also wary of personal geodatabases with large datasets especially if Win 7 is involved rather than XP.

I'd recommend making sure you have extracted just a set of polylines from the CAD data (there are usually several component extracted) and creating a set of polygons directly from that using one of the options I mentioned.  If the polyline data is clean it is about a 5 minute job for the lot.

cheers,
Hardolph

[BrianO_keefe]

TRACE OPTIONS:
- Become available once you have selected TRACE from the Editing Menu. Right Click on the screen to get a contextual menu, Trace options are at the top.

As for the rest, I finally grasped what you were saying. Target: and Task: mean nothing to me. I do not have any menus with these names. But I did discover that I needed all work to be in the same Personal Geodatabase for best chance. I was working with a CAD Storage Geodatabase and an Addressing Geodatabase (I'm the Address Coordinator for my city) and I think going back and forth was causing all sorts of chaos. I think my issues are memory tho. Because I would trace an object, the system would crash after it was created but before I had saved and I would open and suddenly I could trace without selecting sometimes and other anomalies. It seems that the fresher my system is (just after a reboot) the better chance I have to make these things come about.

I have an OLD workstation...

[NAOMIPAUL]

Other people are having problems with the Trace tool on the Editor toolbar.

[TimothyTresohlavy]

Yes, the trace option is much worse in ArcMap10 than in 9.3.1, i.e. it used to work!

[JohnJones]

In order to trace features, the original feature geometries are loaded into a data structure that planarizes and handles the tracing.  Certain combinations of input geometries cause this data structure to fail to build.  Previously, at 9.x, we had many reports of trace crashing, sometimes with and sometimes without reproducible cases.  Part of the 10 improvments were to reduce these annoying crashes into the 'beep', which is still an error but one that is much more survivable.  Where we have reproducible cases we can make improvments to the tracing to avoid the beeping.

Of course the largest change to the tracing at 10 was to automatically load all the visible features in the current extent into the trace without relying on the current selection.  This can cause these issues to happen more frequently than at 9.x since we are more strongly exercising this build process.  If you could share a reproducible case (or more) exhibiting this trace beeping it would greatly help us identify and fix these issues.

A work around that may help would be to resort back to tracing of the selection by selecting the feature(s) you want to trace and holding down <Ctrl> when begining the trace, this may avoid the problem features (assuming it doesn't involve a feature you do want to trace).  You could also control the tracing by temporarily turning off other layers or zooming in to reduce extra features being loaded.

[TimLangner]

Of course the largest change to the tracing at 10 was to automatically load all the visible features in the current extent into the trace without relying on the current selection.  This can cause these issues to happen more frequently than at 9.x since we are more strongly exercising this build process.  If you could share a reproducible case (or more) exhibiting this trace beeping it would greatly help us identify and fix these issues.

Hi John

I have encountered and reproduceable tracing issue which causes ArcMap 10.0.4 to crash almost every time. I've submitted details to ESRI UK, along with a sample of the data and steps I took, as well as screenshots. I put another thread up at: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/53010-How-stable-is-tracing-in-ArcMap-10-when-running-with-SP4

Kind regards

Tim

[TiffanyPuett]

Tim,

I didn't see your scerenshots nor the steps to reproduce the problem.  I would be interested in seeing the problem.

Everyone should note that "trace" at 10 does not work at very large scales for obvious reasons. IE  you can't see what you are tracing and I also suspect it has more to do with the caches/builds referred to above.