How can I know if my geoprocessing tool is still going (and is not stuck)?

[AntoineCantin]

I started a Topo to Raster yesterday and the result window shows the hourglass, but I can't see a progress bar or anything showing me progress. I'm afraid it's bugged or something and I can't waste a day to wait if in the end I don't get results. The windows task manager shows that RuntimeLocalServer is running and using around 20% of my processor and 400Mo of memory.

Anyone can help me with that?

[AntoineCantin]

There is no analysis component here, it's only purpose is visualization. I would prefer that the resolution doesn't vary from one scale to another, beacause I guess that I would have to produce a different hillshade for every scale. The area is pretty big, around 27 000 km2. The smaller portion I did, was about 17 000 km2 and it was fine and waaaayyyy quicker.

[curtvprice]

I would look carefully at your input data. Those look suspiciously like quadrangle boundaries.

Another thing about Topo To Raster is it runs entirely in memory, so if you use up your physical RAM you end up spending most of your time swapping physical memory and virtual memory back and forth (this is called "thrashing") which can increase processing time 100s fold. Thrashing can also lead to IO errors as your are resource bound.

Better to set extents to smaller overlapping areas that fit in RAM and then Mosaic the results together. Topo To Raster will run much faster.

There is documentation on this in the Topo To Raster tool help.

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

Yes big area, that is what I was wondering what your cell size was.  It is the old addage, if you halve the cell size, you quadruple the raster size.  So even if you can find a ratio of an appropriate cell size for your most detailed view covering the smallest area, you may find that a compromise cell size that is appropriate for both.  You don't need to double the cell size, you just need to increase it.  For example going from a 5 m cell size to 6 m means the cell area goes from 25m^2 to 36 m^2 which for 1 km^2 (1000m * 1000m) means you go from 40,000 cell to 27,778 cells or a reduction of 30%.  The 6m/5m is a ratio of 1.2 in terms of cell width but 36/25 = 1.44.  So small changes in the cell width, (area) can produce large reductions in file sizes for extremely large areas.

If this isn't the case... never mind... but you may start running into display speed issues, which will require similar or associated changes to your data structure.