Splitting irregular polygon into equal parts

[oasis maker Oasis]

Hi,

I have a  irregular polygon. I need to split it into equal area polygons. Is there any way to solve this problem.

With regards,

shambhu

[GIS in Ecology]

Dear Shambhu,

 

Thanks for this question. Unnfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a simple way of doing this (see this discussion here for some possible solutions: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/50238-Divide-Polygon-in-equal-areas).

 

Some other possible solutions you can try are using the REPEAT SHAPES tool in the Jenness Enterprises tool set (http://www.jennessent.com/arcgis/repeat_shapes.htm).

 

Alternatively, you can use the GENERATE REGULAR POINTS IN POLYGON too in Geospatial Modelling Environment (http://www.spatialecology.com/gme/genregularpntsinpolys.htm) and use it to generate equally spaced points in your irregular polygon. Once you have done this you can use the THESSSIAN POLYGON tool in ArcGIS to generate equally sized polygons from these regularly spaced points. If you need to generate polygons which are of a specific size, this can be set by setting the distances between the points in the GME tool.

 

I'm not convinced that any of these solutions will work for you as it seems there is no easy way to divide an irregular polygon into smaller polygons of the same size. However, they are worth looking into, and trying, to see if they will work (or work closely enough) for your specific irregular polygon.

 

Sorry not to be able to help more on this, but there just doesn't seem to be a simple solution here. If anyone else knows of a solution, please feel free to post it here as I'm sure that this is a problem a lot of people will face at some time or other.

 

All the best,

 

Colin

[Zac Davis]

Theres a very simple and powerful soultion for this , its base on Autocad 

http://www.kimprojects.com/product/divide-area-autocad/

[GIS in Ecology]

Hi Zac,

 

Thanks for this link. While it is AutoCAD based (rather than using one of the more popular GIS software packages), this does look like a very useful tool for dividing irregular polygons into equal sized pieces, especially since there don't appear to be tools within GIS software to do this. Thanks again for posting this link and highlighting the existence of this tool.

 

All the best,

 

Colin