Is there a tool to find similarly shaped polygons in a layer?

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01-03-2016 08:52 AM
MichaelGinzburg
Occasional Contributor II

Hello,

For example, to find similarly shaped buildings in building polygons layer.

Thanks!

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7 Replies
DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

Well you could determine the minimum area bounding rectangle and determine the ratios of their diameters.  Or you could do the aforementioned and determine a minimum area bounding circle and determine their ratios.  It really depends upon what kind of metric you want...there are lots (ie perimeter, area diagonal base etc etc)

This extension doesn't require any license level http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=564e2949763943e3b9fb4240bab0ca2f

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MichaelGinzburg
Occasional Contributor II

Thanks, but the tool you've mentioned looks like rather approximate.

I am searching for a tool based more accurate congruence calculations.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

do you have an image of what you are trying assess similarity for?  rectangular building would be easily assessed with minimum area bounding rectangles.  You can also accompany that with area and/or perimeter ratios.  Shape similarity can be described on a variety of levels

Addendum 

as for shape congruence specifically, you can determine interior angles of polygons as well as segment lengths, and hence ratios of those and area, but there are no built-in tools to do so.

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michaelvidalis
New Contributor

You could convert polygons to raster (feature to raster) and  run  "zonal statistics".

Join the result zonal table with feature and sort by the "sum" column.

This give the result you want.

The smaller pixel value  in the conversion, gives  better results.

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Pieter_Geertvan_den_Beukel
Esri Contributor

Did you check the Find Identical tool?

Find Identical—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

JimmyKroon
Occasional Contributor II

I think if you look for features with a similar width and height of a minimum bounding rectangle, area, and perimeter length - you'd be close. A polygon with those 4 similarities is likely to be the same shape. But I think you'd have to code or build the model yourself.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

you might want to substitute the convex hull for the MABR instead, since the CH will in all likely hood share similar ratios with the other parameters.

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