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I have 327 text files that contain xyz data from LiDAR. I need to make them into a giant point shapefile to interpolate into a DEM. I'm guessing the number of points I have is in the range of half a billion. It's way too many to put into an excel file end to end. I'd prefer not to convert each one of them individually.

I'm trying to use the batch process make XY event layer in Arc. It ran successfully (after many many hours) and put only the last event layer in the table of contents. That layer does not have all the points. I checked. I can't find the other layers. It made them, but they're not in the table of contents. If I try to do parts of the data set with the same batch process again, all the file names have an error because all the files already exist. (yes, they're all different names) Does anyone know where these files are? They're temporary so they disappear once I close ArcMap. I need to do something to make them all into shapefiles or feature classes and merge them all. I'm not sure how to do the next steps, but I can't find a way to try things if I can't find these layers.

I also tried XY to feature class in ArcCatalog, but it won't do a batch process.

Any ideas?

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    QGis is much much quicker for this process, and you can bypass the make xy event layer altogether with a software like Fusion or LasTools. Further, if your textfiles represent non-overlapping flightlines, you could convert them one-by-one to points and then raster, and then mosaic the rasters.
    – J Kelly
    Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 0:04
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    Event layers are stored in memory. Make sure you export them to feature class with unique names
    – Ben S Nadler
    Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 4:50
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    I recommend you to have a look at geonet.esri.com/thread/34075
    – fatih_dur
    Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 9:41
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    Event layers are ephemeral in nature, calcluated on the fly from non-geodata sources. Batch construction of event layers without saving them to a geodata format is, unfortunately, rather pointless.
    – Vince
    Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 15:43

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As commented by @Vince:

Event layers are ephemeral in nature, calculated on the fly from non-geodata sources. Batch construction of event layers without saving them to a geodata format is, unfortunately, rather pointless.

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