Polygons will not buffer in ArcMap and instead give WARNING 000117: Warning empty output generated?

Question

I have been trying to buffer 15 polygons (-15m) in ArcMap. I did a batch buffer and 13 polygons worked fine, the other 2 have not buffered, an error occurs: WARNING 000117: Warning empty output generated. Executed (Buffer) successfully. End Time: Fri Jul 06 18:58:32 2012 (Elapsed Time: 1.00 seconds)

All the input polygons are similar with full attribute tables so the output should not be empty for these 2!

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 06 '12 at 19:21

If the negative buffer distance is large enough to collapse the polygon to nothing, a null geometry will be generated. A warning message will be given, and any null geometry features will not be written to the output feature class. (ESRI)

Any chance that some of your polygons when buffered by a negative value would result in a null geometry?

You can control and flag this programatically with ArcObjects (not sure about python) by trapping the error and skipping (not creating a feature for) the "culprit" polygons.

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 05 '16 at 21:57

3

Just a wild guess, related to bugs like Polygons converted from lines have a negative area where ArcGIS confuses the "outside" and "inside" of the polygon border.

Export your data to a new shapefile.
Run the Repair Geometry tool on this new shapefile.
Buffer this new shapefile.

Does that fix things?

edited Sep 05 '16 at 21:57

PolyGeo

65,136
29
109
338

answered Jul 06 '12 at 18:18

MappingTomorrow

1,640
9
11

Is the polygon more than 15m wide? If not it will collapse on itself and result in empty geometry. – dklassen Jul 06 '12 at 18:33
Out of curiosity: Why? I was under the impression that a 15m buffer could be applied to an arbitrarily small line, point, or polygon without becoming invalid. – MappingTomorrow Jul 06 '12 at 18:40
I see, I missed the "(-15)" = "negative 15m" – MappingTomorrow Jul 06 '12 at 23:50

Polygons will not buffer in ArcMap and instead give WARNING 000117: Warning empty output generated?

2 Answers2

Linked