Trace tool in Create Features randomly(?) not working - Help!

[BrettDavies]

Hi
I'm compiling a geologic map and use the trace tool to generate infill polygons. Very recently - I upgraded with the latest Service Pack for v.10 - the tool stopped working in parts (seemingly) of the map. I hit the 'trace icon', click on the last point of the newly developing polygon (located on an existing polygon), wait for it to 'register' and then hear a tone/beep and note that it refuses to trace along the pre-existing polygon's boundary. It has happened in other parts of the map, but it is consistent in one part. I can only hand 'draw' the polygon and then clip the existing polygons to 'cut-out' the new one.
Sometimes ArcMap just hangs after clicking the last polygon and I have to restart it.
I am completing a major project for a client here in the Sahara Desert (yes, it is hot at the moment) and urgently need to understand / fix the issue. Any suggestions/help would be very gratefully received!
Thanks.

[RobertCharnock1]

I had this same problem and none of the solutions above worked for me. I found that I could only trace within the view that I first selected the Start Editing tool. The Trace tool wouldn't work outside that area.

​Solution

To fix this I zoomed so that the entire layer I wanted to trace was completely in view, then I selected Start Editing.

It worked fine after that, but I had to do the same thing if I stopped then started editing, which is annoying.

Hope this helps.

[South_JordanCity_of]

Hi all!

I know this is a rather old thread, but I'm having the same issue.

What helped was to select the features to be traced first, then, after clicking on the trace icon, open the options for tracing (press o key) and enable the option to trace selected features.

This let me trace the selected features without any problems.

Hope this helps,

cheers!

Marc Seliger

[Anna_MariePrice]

It's frustrating that this problem seems random. It doesn't matter if the area is complex or not. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. I found that zooming in helps. Sometimes I have to zoom way in. I'll finish a partial sketch (red square on vertex), pan or zoom, and begin tracing again. Sometimes I can zoom out and the trace function starts working optimally again, sometimes it doesn't. It's annoying to zoom in so close at times, but the job gets done with minimal frustration. I hope they figure out this bug.

[deleted-user-vkIIUyG-qB5B]

I came to this thread because I was having the same problem, very frustrating. There was a pop-up when I selected start editing that said my layers were in a different projection than the data frame. After I changed the projection of the data frame to the match my layers trace began working again. I hope that helps!

[BrettDavies]

Five years after my initial post and the problem still exists...

I sent data (on request) to ESRI and they reproduced the problem, but had no solution. I repeat, this was five years ago. As a recap, I found that I had to zoom progressively more and more in to get the trace tool to work. With large layers this is totally impractical. Given the fact that ESRI reproduced the issue, I am astounded that no fix, or info update (a basic courtesy I would have thought) has been forthcoming from them. Shameful customer service. But then again, the larger the company, the less they care (even when users are paying $thousands on 'Maintenance' agreements) about individual users with equally important deadlines to meet. We're not all tertiary qualified GIS experts, we're users qualified up to doctoral level in other disciplines. End of rant!

Come on Esri, what's going on to resolve this issue??

[KyleSingh]

We have also had this exact problem since 10.0  

A work around we found is that you have to zoom in to as small an extent as possible and usually the trace tool will begin working again.  I think that arcmap's trace tool starts to choke when there is too much geometry displayed on the screen, because it reads all visual vertices into memory.  By  zooming way in, it reduces arcmaps task of storing all the geometry.

[BrettDavies]

Hi Kylie, 

What you say is basically what I had to do, but also as I said, it's impractical when complex geometry is, and the layer is geographically broad. My impression was that the larger the geographic area, the sooner the issue manifests itself. When I posted originally I was compiling a geologic map of part of Mauritania. I posted again with the same problem during the compilation of a new map for he whole of Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and it was this dataset I sent to ESRI (on their request) and with which they reproduced the problem. 

This tool is critically important in my workflow when compiling geologic maps - it greatly decreases the time it takes to complete the compilation. I hope ESRI pulls their finger out and actually does address it. 

[KyleSingh]

Brett,

When I have to trace geographically large areas, I will choose the "Trace selected features" option in the Trace options (hit the O key on your keyboard when using the trace tool)...  It works more times than not.  Also, open your feature Cache tool bar and play with some some of the cache settings.   But ESRI should have fixed this by now!  This proves that those designing the software don't Really use it!

[BrettDavies]

Hi Kylie,

Thanks. Will give this a try when the problem arises again. And yes, programmers need to remember that they're working for 'users', not other programmers...

I'll report back when when I have had the chance to try your work around.

Cheers!

[RachaelPratt]

It's August 2017 and I still have this problem. As others have, I've tried all the suggestions above and none have worked. I'm using 10.3.0.4322.