US MAP Shape file

[itsmeanuj]

Hi Experts - 

We want to create a custom shape map. For this, we are joining our Client's ZIP to Terr File with the US ZCTA available online. And then generating a shape file through our Alteryx workflow to build the map in Power BI. We ran the process but we are seeing white spaces in the output map. We noticed our ZIP level data file has 41k ZIPs and the shape file has ~33k ZIPs which may be resulting in white spaces on the map. We have tried using multiple shape files from multiple years (2008, 2016, 2020) but got similar outputs. Is there a way to build an Alteryx process to create shapes for the white space?

Thanks,

Anuj

[FrederikE]

Hey @itsmeanuj

You can generate the missing areas using the Poly Split tool (yes that is very counter-intuitive :D) 

See the attached example. 

[itsmeanuj]

@FrederikE - thanks for your response. How do we do this step with the shape file we have? These are the white spaces that we want to fill in the final map. 

we have downloaded it from this link - https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2020/ZCTA520/

[FrederikE]

Hey @itsmeanuj,

This will fill some holes (4000), but some aren't caught by this because they cover major areas.

If this is not enough you could look for a spatial file of the whole US and substract the the ZIP-Code Areas from it (Spatial Process tool). The difference then would be one shape left covering everything else. But this would ofc. be just one polygon and not multiple ones.