Buffer disaggregating

[md517t]

When creating a buffer around a spectrum license in Alaska, the buffer can only be created for roughly 30 miles (for this particular license).  When the buffer is increased above 30 miles, the buffer divides itself on the west and moves the piece it removed to the far east (imagine a flat map with part of Alaska on the west side and the rest of it appearing on the east).  I am interested in an explanation why Alteryx handles the buffer this way? 

[OllieClarke]

Hi @md517t 

I think this is more to do with alteryx's displaying of spatial data in the browse tool. If you zoom out on the map, you'll notice that alteryx only displays each country once - there's no wrapping round the globe you just have a blue box surrounding the map:

So as you buffer Alaska beyond the minimum longitude (-180), it gets a new longitude of 180 and appears on the other side of the world. 

I split your buffer into points and looked at the distance between each point and its previous to see if Alteryx would go the short or long way round the globe, but it looks like the distances are measured correctly (as we would hope 😁)

Hope that helps,

Ollie

[md517t]

Thank you Ollie for the explanation! 

My concern came from a 250 mile buffer around this particular license that caused a mismatch when using the spatial match tool.  In my module I had set buffer of 250 miles for all licenses.  Only this license would not match, therefore causing the Report Map tool to not produce a map for it.   It took me quite some time to realize it was due to the buffer size for this one licenses.  I have attached an example below. 

[OllieClarke · Accepted solution]

Hey @md517t 

that was really weird. Buffering the polygon for some reason left the polygon unfilled on the west side. I used the poly split tool to split to detailed regions, then filtered out the hole, and then recombined so that the match now worked. But I have to say I don't know why it was happening...

If you compare the browse tool after the buffer tool and the one after the polysplit tool, you can see the difference

edit: sorry for not fully understanding earlier!

[md517t]

Thank you again Ollie!