arcpy PolygonToRaster ERROR 000918: Cannot retrieve feature class extent

Question

I am trying to convert a polygon feature class (created intermediately as part of a larger process) to a raster, which will have the same snap settings and cell size as another input raster. However, every time i try to run it, I get this error:

ExecuteError: ERROR 000918: Cannot retrieve feature class extent.

I cannot find any help on this issue and I don't know what to do. I have already seen this question and it did not help resolve the issue.

This is the code:

cell_size = float(GetRasterProperties(in_raster, 'CELLSIZEX').getOutput(0))

env.snapRaster = in_raster

PolygonToRaster(buffer_fc, z_field_name, stamp_raster, cellsize=cell_size)

return None

The same parameters work when I execute "Polygon To Raster" diretly from the ArcToolbox GUI.

Answer 1

Thanks to MaryBeth for suggesting that it was a schema lock issue. By running arcpy.TestSchemaLock() on the feature class that I was trying to convert to raster (buffer_fc), I saw that it was being locked, which was preventing PolygonToRaster() from acquiring its extent and therefore failing. Apparently, MultipleRingBuffer() has some locking issues (that was where buffer_fc came from). I used arcpy.CopyFeatures() to copy it to a new dataset and then ran PolygonToRaster() on that instead, and it worked perfectly.