Clip (Data Management) isn't using input features as clipping geometry

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04-15-2014 04:37 PM
EmilyDavis
New Contributor
I'm using Clip (Data management) to clip a number of fire severity rasters to some watershed polygons.  The aim is to get just the area of each fire within the relevant watershed polygon.  I have this set up in Modelbuilder so I can automate it to some extent, just changing the Output Extent (watershed polygon feature class) with each model run.  In Clip, I have specified "Use Input Features as Clipping Geometry."  When I have used this model previously, I got my desired result of just getting the part of the raster than overlapped with each polygon; any fires that DIDN'T have any overlap with the polygon in question just showed up as EMPTY rasters (which was great, not a problem).  Now when I try to use this model, I do get the fires that overlap, clipped using the polygon geometry, but fires way outside the polygon don't conveniently process as empty rasters like they did before: they show up in their entirety.  I could go through and weed out all these non relevant fire rasters by hand, but I have 48 fires and 18 watersheds and a bunch of other geoprocessing operations I need to run on the clipped fires. 

Why is this happening even though I specified "Use Input Feature as Clipping Geometry" and even though it's never happened in previous uses of this model?

Screenshot of model:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]33133[/ATTACH]
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8 Replies
TimWitt
Frequent Contributor
Emily,

did you try and use this tool instead of clip? Let me know if that worked.

Tim
NyigamBole
New Contributor II

served the purpose well for me... thank You Emily🙂

 

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markdenil
Occasional Contributor III
I notice that the help for this tool in both 9.3 and 10.1 says:
When using ArcMap, you also have the ability to use the selected features as the clipping extent.


But the 10.1 help goes on to say:
If a feature within the feature class is selected and Selection Extent is checked (clipping_geometry is set to ClippingGeometry), then the output clips out the areas that are selected. If a feature within the feature class is selected but Selection Extent is not checked, then the output clips out the minimum bounding rectangle for that feature.

I don't see in your model where the significant polygon is selected.
It seems that even if there is only one polygon in the fc,
you need to select it to get the behavior you want.
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EmilyDavis
New Contributor
I notice that the help for this tool in both 9.3 and 10.1 says:
When using ArcMap, you also have the ability to use the selected features as the clipping extent.


But the 10.1 help goes on to say:
If a feature within the feature class is selected and Selection Extent is checked (clipping_geometry is set to ClippingGeometry), then the output clips out the areas that are selected. If a feature within the feature class is selected but Selection Extent is not checked, then the output clips out the minimum bounding rectangle for that feature.

I don't see in your model where the significant polygon is selected.
It seems that even if there is only one polygon in the fc,
you need to select it to get the behavior you want.


Actually, I did check the Selection Extent in my model. You can't see it in the screenshot, because to check this box you have to double-click on the Clip tool in the model and set your parameters inside.  That's part of my confusion.  Why is this model not clipping out the rasters not within the polygons of interest, EVEN THOUGH I checked the Selection Extent box?
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EmilyDavis
New Contributor
Emily,

did you try and use this tool instead of clip? Let me know if that worked.

Tim


Hi Tim,
I played around with Extract by Mask before I started using Clip.  It doesn't handle the rasters well if they're outside the polygon of interest (ie instead of just ignoring them, the tool crashes because it doesn't know what's going on).  So I moved to Clip.
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EmilyDavis
New Contributor
I notice that the help for this tool in both 9.3 and 10.1 says:
When using ArcMap, you also have the ability to use the selected features as the clipping extent.


But the 10.1 help goes on to say:
If a feature within the feature class is selected and Selection Extent is checked (clipping_geometry is set to ClippingGeometry), then the output clips out the areas that are selected. If a feature within the feature class is selected but Selection Extent is not checked, then the output clips out the minimum bounding rectangle for that feature.

I don't see in your model where the significant polygon is selected.
It seems that even if there is only one polygon in the fc,
you need to select it to get the behavior you want.


Mark-- as a follow up, here is a screen shot of the parameters I set for the Clip tool.  You can see that I selected the polygon Beaver15 as the output extent (the f.c. it is linked to in the model) as well as checking the Clipping Geometry box.  What am I missing?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]33150[/ATTACH]
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markdenil
Occasional Contributor III
Beaver15 is a feature class.
You are not selecting a feature by using it as the output extent.
It may contain only one feature, but the feature class is not what you need to select to get the behavior you want.


Make a layer of Beaver15  ->  [Make Feature Layer (Data Management)]
and then
select a feature in Beaver15  -> [Select Layer By Attribute (Data Management)]
and then pass that layer-with-a-selection to the clip tool as the in_template_dataset
instead of the whole feature class....
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EmilyDavis
New Contributor
Beaver15 is a feature class.
You are not selecting a feature by using it as the output extent.
It may contain only one feature, but the feature class is not what you need to select to get the behavior you want.


Make a layer of Beaver15  ->  [Make Feature Layer (Data Management)]
and then
select a feature in Beaver15  -> [Select Layer By Attribute (Data Management)]
and then pass that layer-with-a-selection to the clip tool as the in_template_dataset
instead of the whole feature class....


Hi Mark,
I followed your instructions to the letter, but am still having the same problematic results.  Any other thoughts?

Thanks,
Emily
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