Help with Clipping Data Error – Empty output generated – Troubleshooting has not fixed the problem – ArcGIS 10.5

[AmyJ]

Hi! I am having issues clipping a very large polygon shapefile – can you all please help me? The error returned is “WARNING 000117: Warning empty output generated“. I have tried troubleshooting all of the usual suspects, including recommendations from the geonet community such as:

1. The polygons are in the same projection
2. I repaired the geometry (which fixed some issues but still got the error message when re-running)
3. Since it is a large file – I created a new shapefile of subset data (Export data) that was much smaller and it is still not working
4. The clip feature is just one single polygon not a multipart polygon
5. The clip feature is contained within the shapefile of polygons that I am trying to clip (ie clip feature is for a small area in Central America and the polygons that I am trying to clip are for the entire world)
6. Both are shapefiles as I know geodatabases can sometimes cause issues
7. I have used the clip feature with other shapefiles without a problem so I know that nothing is wrong with this clip feature.
8. Standard re-boot of computer, programs
9. No features are selected when I am running this tool
10. Located in a folder with no spaces and the file name is very short

However the clip still returns the same error. The large dataset I am trying to clip is the MAMMALS file located at this link (the amphibians and reptiles files work just fine, but the Mammals does not): http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data

Thank you!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Those are big files... It appears Mammals consists of two associated data sets.

Did you try each of those separately?

I wouldn't recommend the shapefiles now, but a geodatabase in a simple folder path with nothing else in it.

I would also try clipping another area other than the one that you want.

And make sure that both files are single part just in case.

Get back with further information and/or results

[AmyJ · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the ideas Dan! After a lot of trials, I finally found that the following procedure works:

1. Download Terrestrial Mammals and Marine Mammals separately (Thanks for this idea Dan, I hadn't thought of it for some reason)

2. Repair Geometry (as I had done before)

3. Select by location (so this selected only the polygons that were located in the area that I wanted to clip it to)

4. Export selected data into a new shapefile

5. Split by Attribute Plug In (Split By Attribute Tool - Desktop Decision Support Tools) which split each polygon in the shapefile into a different feature class of a new geodatabase

6. Clip using Model Builder's feature class iterator

And so far, it has been working!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Glad it worked out Amy