Combining Complex Polygons

[tavakian]

I've got a 500Mb file that has over 1,000 complex polygons each with lots of nodes and I need to combine all the polygons into one record. The summarize tool works, and it goes from 0 to 100% fairly fast, but stays at 100% for several hours before it finally completes. The ironic part is that I can run that file through the report map tool, and it outputs the polygons as one image and does so in less than a minute.

Is there some other way of combining the polygons in that file that would be faster than the summarize tool?

[atcodedog05]

Hi @tavakian 

Hmm, I suppose not. Summarize is the way to go to it. But lets see if anyone has anything to say about it.

[Qiu]

@tavakian 

Agree with @atcodedog05 , Summarize Tool is the correct one.

But maybe

• Turn on the AMP engine?
• Use a batch macro to process it

[Ben_H]

Hi @tavakian,

I'm not sure what you can do to speed this up beyond what has already been suggested.

Although, one thing that would help is to remove some of the complexity of the polygons before you summarize them using the generalize tool.

The obvious downside being that you lose some detail.

Regards,

Ben

[tavakian]

The best solution I have found is to break those polygons into small polygons. Many of these polygons are hundreds of miles wide and Alteryx seems to take forever when they get beyond a certain size. I found that if I use the Spatial Match tool and combine the polygon file with a zip code file of the entire us, and then use the "Output Intersection Object", it cut's up the larger polygons into smaller zip code size polygons. I then use the Summarize tool to combine the polygons at the zip code level so that I have 1 polygon per zip code and processing time goes from many hours to minutes.