Strange result of trade area with Eliminate Overlap

[Drussek]

I've generated trade area with specific value 1000miles, for only 2 points.

With checked "Eliminate Overlap" the result looks like this:

Why these areas aren't identical and perfectly symetric? The border between points shouldn't be exactly in a half way between them? Does this mean the tool is not very accurate?

[Ben_H · Accepted solution]

Hi @Drussek

Apologies for the fuzziness of this, but this is my understanding -

The circles are in a sense the same size, it's just that the Earth is not a flat surface and that what we want to look at has to be projected to make appear as if it is.

This website is a good illustration of how map projections warp our view of the world.

https://thetruesize.com

I think with mercator projection those circles would only look exactly the same at the same latitude.

I'm not sure about how exactly the non-overlapping polygons are generated so there may well be a bit of error in there (i.e. not precisely mid way between). The level of error may well also be exaggerated at such scales.

Regards,

Ben