Arcs to densified line - fidelity

[BenLeslie1]

When using shapefiles it seems that lines drawn as arcs are automatically converted to densified line.  Is there a way to change the fidelity of this conversion i.e. I want the resulting line to have more vertices, as shown in the image below.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Shapefiles don't support arcs so you will automatically get an n-segmented feature which, if memory serves, is a segment of a 36-sided circle.  A featureclass in a gdb supports arc and you can turn off the densification during the construction process

[BenLeslie1]

The number of segments seems to be related to the size of the circle - bigger circle, more segments.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

then the densification is by distance and not by angle... check to see if the segment lengths are the same for a small vs a large arc

[JoshuaBixby]

If you have to output to a shape file, use Densify—Help | ArcGIS Desktop first before exporting/saving.