WARNING 000635: Skipping feature because of NULL or EMPTY geometry.

[CarolLiu]

I got warning message "WARNING 000635: Skipping feature because of NULL or EMPTY geometry" while doing Buffer_analysis {arcpy.Buffer_analysis("StreetLights",r"C:\MyExercises\Scratch\Temporary Storage.gdb\bf5","BuffDis")}. The input was point feature "StreetLights", The buffer distance was "BuffDis" (which is field of StreetLights).

Does anyone know why warning message happened?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

a record did not have a value in the buffer field or it is in error (ie null or 0 ) Always query for appropriate records first before using tools such as this.  A simple test is to query all records whose buffer distance is > 0.0.  Then when you run the buffer tool, only those records will be involved in the process, excluding erroneous records.

[CarolLiu]

I don't quite understand what you point out...You mean table record? None of the value of in the field "BuffDis" is null or 0 (see the screenshot).

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

Geometry then.  How many points do you have?  the OBJECTID are missing some or is that a sorted selection.  Try Repair Geometry, or since you have a point file, it wouldn't hurt to add the XY coordinates to the table

Add Geometry Attributes—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

If you get 0,0 for any of the points, they are null geometry and need to be removed or fixed

[CarolLiu]

You are right. That was geometry issue. I added XY, it turned out 151 out of 1470 were NULL. Thanks, Dan!