Latest Contributions by MarkBoucher

Ah... Ok. Did the  the Extract by Mask tool work? If not, try converting the tif file to another raster format. ... View more

Check the processing extents. Sometimes, for some unknown reason, the processing extents can be changed. When this happens the results from any raster processing can be clipped to the limits of the processing extents. If that happens, you only see part of the results or no results. A telltale sign is getting no results or results that have vertical and/or horizontal limits. Puzzled me for a long time. Go to the "Geoprocessing" menu> "Environments..." > "Processing Extent".  Under Processing Extent choose a layer that you know covers the full  extent of the waters you are processing and click OK. ... View more

Sorry. It is hard to give specific instruction without more information. I'm in the middle of a critical assignment and I can't take time out to work a lot on this. Have you cleared out the temporary files? ... View more

I started the thread below my signature (The new format leaves off the signature. Search for "Arc Hydro Problem Solvers"). You might find more helpful hints there. You can go there and then search the page for key words such as walls, breach, etc. If I were you I'd use a polylilne layer for the walls and add one on the road (or copy the polyline for the road to the innerwalls layer). Then in the build walls function use the culvert polylines (agreestream) as the "breach lines". In the buildwalls process, the dem is raised along the polyline and will "breach" the wall at the breach lines. This will force the flows to cross the road at the cuverts. I've done this on railroad tracks that the dem can't "see" because it is course and the area is flat. Hope this helps. ... View more

Look at number 1 under this post: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/48100-ArcHydro-Problem-Solvers?p=270146&viewfull=1#post270146. This pracitce not only increases speed, it usually eliminates the error you are getting. The link I provided is one of several posts under the Arc Hydro Problem Solvers Thread which is linked under my signature below. ... View more

You could copy the county polygons to a separate "mask" shapefile. You may or may not have to merge the polygons to make a "mask". Using this mask shapefile you can clip each of the different shapefiles to make new shapefiles for those that are just in the three counties. The tool for this is Analysis Tools.tbx\Extract\Clip. For rasters data you can use Spatial Analyst Tools.tbx\Extraction\Extract by Mask. If you want to use the symbology from the original shapefiles, you can right click on each of the original shapefiles in Arc Map and choose "Save as Layer File". This creates a layer file which stores the property settings (symbology, labeling, etc.). To make this apply to your clipped shape files, bring the layer files in to your mxd (it will have the source of the original layer) and change the source for each one to be the clipped shapefiles. There may be a tool that someone has made that will do all of this in one tool, but I don't know of one. Another option would be to use a function in the Data Frame properties (right click the data frame and find at bottom of menu). Under the Data Frame tab, at the bottom, there are clipping options. This allows you to use a shapefile to clip the data without actually having to do all the stuff I mention above. There are problems with getting this to print on paper the way it looks on screen so before you do to much work, make sure it prints out as you want it with the clipped data frame. One last option is to copy the state polygon and make the mask of the three counties as mentioned in paragraph 1 above. Then use the Analysis Tools.tbx\Overlay\Union tool on these shapefiles. Then delete the features in the shape file defined by the "mask". What you have is a reverse mask that you can lay over the rest of the data to mask it out. Edit the mask to expand it's outer edge as needed. This will do some of what the data frame mask does. You may have to deal with labels of features outside of the county boundaries though. Depends on how much labeling you plan on. ... View more

Try putting your project on your local drive and not on the network. This will speed up processing and reduce errors. See link under my signature for other Arc Hydro tips. ... View more

A problem I have encountered is that some vector files are being processed without necessary fields. The DrainageLine file needs a field labeled "DrainID" for AdjointCatchment to process. If it does not have the field, just add it and set it equal to "GridID." I have not encountered this, or at least I have not looked at the fields after a process has failed to see if anything is missing. Possibly the missing fields are the cause of the crashes. The crashes, I've found are nearly eliminated when working on my local computer and not over the network. Maybe, when working over the network, the slow processing causes a "hiccup" in the processing steps and the fields are not created thereby causing the crash. I am no network guru, but I am familiar with radio data communications. In our radio based data collection system (SCADA) there is a "time out" setting. If one radio does not "hear" from the other after a certain time, the assumption is that the communication link is lost and the radio "gives up" trying to communicate. If we set the time out to low, the system gives up trying to communicate too soon. If we set it to high, it will "waste time" trying to communicate when there is a problem. This is important with we need to collect data from several data collection stations and can't keep waiting because of a bad radio com issue. The closest most people get to this is when their smart phone is trying to connect to wifi and can't make a connection. It will give up trying after some time. The next closest is when trying to fax to a non-fax number and the fax machine tries a few times and then gives up when it doesn't get an answer or "handshake" from the other end. I put this out there to say that maybe some network speeds are too slow for Arc Map to work with when doing the heavy data processing and some processes in Arc Map give up when the other end of the network doesn't answer soon enough due to bottle necked data transfer. ... View more

I know you can temporarily turn off snapping by holding the space bar down. Maybe that would help in some cases. ... View more

...  recently have run into the issue of the watershed output polygon cutting directly through "streams" shown in the flow accumulation layer, and seemingly restricted by something. ... The "restricted by something" statement makes me think to ask you to consider resetting the processing extents. See number 5 on this post: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/48100-ArcHydro-Problem-Solvers?p=270146&viewfull=1#post270146. Sometimes the processing extent can be set to one of the layers you are using and the processing results will stop at the "rectangle" limits of that layer. Resetting the processing extent fixes that. ... View more

License requirement information for different tools w/in Arc Hydro. http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/110379-ArcGIS-Standard-License?p=390472&viewfull=1#post390472 ... View more

I've found that the shorter the filepath and filename, the less likely I will have problems. Don't use spaces in the path or names either. ... View more

You need to have Spatial Analyst to run the Arc Hydro tools. I don't think you need a high level Arc Map license. Basic should work. However, look at http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/101282-Problem-with-create-drainage-line-structure-dem-manipulation?p=390458&viewfull=1#post390458. Seems some functions do require the higher license. ... View more

This error can be eliminated for the most part by putting your project on your local drive. Working over a network usually results in this error for me. Putting the project on the local drive also speeds up the processing tremendously. I've collected several problem solvers at that the link below my signature. Maybe they would be helpful to you. ... View more

I use Arc Hydro. It is an add on to Arc Map. The forum for Arc Hydro is at http://forums.arcgis.com/forums/88-Arc-Hydro. There you will find a sticky that gives the ftp folder where you can download it. Also, the US Army Corps of Engineers had ESRI create HEC-GeoHMS which runs on the same tools as Arc Hydro (http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-geohms/). If you install GeoHMS, it installs the appropriate Arc Hydro version. Either way, these have tools you can use for hydrology that are more automated than the Spatial Analyst tools, though I think at the heart they use the SA functions. ... View more