I am trying to count how many points, out of 17 million, fall inside a polygon (see image below)
which I created from dissolving various buffers and features. The polygon layer is thus one dissolved feature. Both the points and the polygon are feature classes saved inside a file geodatabase. I am also using ArcGIS 10.3 on a 64 bit desktop.
To count the number of points I first added a column called 'Count'and populated all fields with 1. I then right clicked my polygon layer, clicked 'Join and Relate', and then 'Join'. I then chose the join option: 'Join data from another layer based on spatial location'. The parameters I entered are below:
. As you can see, I am summing all fields. Thus, I will be able to sum the 'Count' column to determine how many point features lie inside the polygon feature as shown above.
I started this process 23 hours ago, and so far only half of the 17 million points are processed. I am also concurrently running two other similar processes with copies of the 17 million points and two separate polygon layers (both point/polygon feature classes are saved in separate geodatabases).
I was able to successfully do a similar join with the 17 million points and a fishnet with a grid size of 1 mile by 1 mile covering the state of Ohio. That process only took me 2.5 hours yesterday.
Why is it taking so long to sum all points inside a dissolved polygon feature class? Is running such a process 3 times at the same time adding to the slow speed? Is there a way to speed up this process in ArcGIS 10.3?
I am the only GIS Analyst at my company and am at a loss in understanding why it is taking so long.