Raster Domain (3D Analyst)

Summary

Constructs a 3D polygon or polyline delineating the height along the boundary of a raster surface.

Illustration

Raster Domain input and output

Usage

  • The tool is designed to operate on a raster surface and will only operate on a single-band raster or a specific band from a multi-band raster. The output feature captures the boundary of contiguous cells with data values, and its z value is interpolated along the perimeter of the surface. The perimeter is defined by connecting the center of the outermost cells in the raster.

  • Output geometry is placed in one feature record and may comprise of multipart feature if the raster has discontinuous data cells separated by NoData cells.

    Note:

    3D polygons only contain elevation values along the perimeter of the features, as interior portions of the polygon will not contain any vertices. When drawn in 3D with an area fill, the boundary vertices are arbitrarily connected into triangles for rendering. Unless the polygon is planar, either sloped or horizontal, it's unlikely the fill will accurately represent the interior surface. For this reason, it is recommended that you draw nonplanar 3D polygons without fill symbology.

Parameters

LabelExplanationData Type
Input Raster

The raster to process.

Raster Layer; Mosaic Layer
Output Feature Class

The feature class that will be produced.

Feature Class
Output Feature Class Type

The geometry of the output feature class.

  • Line — The output will be a z-enabled line feature class.
  • Polygon — The output will be a z-enabled polygon feature class.
String

arcpy.ddd.RasterDomain(in_raster, out_feature_class, out_geometry_type)
NameExplanationData Type
in_raster

The raster to process.

Raster Layer; Mosaic Layer
out_feature_class

The feature class that will be produced.

Feature Class
out_geometry_type

The geometry of the output feature class.

  • LINEThe output will be a z-enabled line feature class.
  • POLYGONThe output will be a z-enabled polygon feature class.
String

Code sample

RasterDomain example 1 (Python window)

The following sample demonstrates the use of this tool in the Python window.

arcpy.env.workspace = "C:/data"
arcpy.RasterDomain_3d("dtm_grd", "raster_domain.shp", "POLYGON")
RasterDomain example 2 (stand-alone script)

The following sample demonstrates the use of this tool in a stand-alone Python script.

'''*********************************************************************
Name: RasterDomain Example
Description: This script demonstrates how to use the 
             Raster Domain tool to generate polygon footprints for all
             *.img rasters in a given workspace.
**********************************************************************'''

# Import system modules
import arcpy

# Set environment settings
arcpy.env.workspace = "C:/data"

# Create the list of IMG rasters
rasterList = arcpy.ListRasters("*", "IMG")
# Verify there are rasters in the list
if rasterList:
    # Loop the process for each raster
    for raster in rasterList:
        # Set Local Variables
        outGeom = "POLYGON" # output geometry type
        # The [:-4] strips the .img from the raster name
        outPoly = "domain_" + raster[:-4] + ".shp"
        print("Creating footprint polygon for " + raster + ".")
        #Execute RasterDomain
        arcpy.RasterDomain_3d(raster, outPoly, outGeom)
    print("Finished.")
else:
    print("There are no IMG files in the " + env.workspace + " directory.")

Licensing information

  • Basic: Requires 3D Analyst
  • Standard: Requires 3D Analyst
  • Advanced: Requires 3D Analyst