I have a table with a series of lat/long points - how do I convert them into polygons?

Question

I have an Excel sheet with about 150 points (lat and long in decimal degrees) which belong to about 15 different polygons. The columns I have are FID, NAME (the same between polygons), POINTS (points for the polygons), LAT, LONG, ELEV.

So a sample row might have: FID: 0, NAME: LO, POINTS: LO1, LAT: xx.xxxxxxxx, LONG: -yy.yyyyyyyy, ELEV: zzzz

The NAME field is the same for the different points that make up one polygon (so ~10 fields have the name LO, and the points are numbered as NAMEx [so the LO polygon will have different rows with LO1, LO2, LO3, etc. in the POINTS field).

I have already successfully converted these points to a shapefile in Arc, is there a way to make them into polygons? I have access to ArcMap 10.1 or 10.2. Thanks all.

Answer 1

There is a complete Table to Polygon model builder solution shown in the help file. See the Migrating from Military Analyst and MOLE (http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//000n00000005000000.htm). Look for the topic, Using geoprocessing tools and Model Builder.

Answer 2

Feature to polygon is for lines and polygons... can use it to split polygons with lines. The point input is used for centroids i.e. attribution. Eddie (cool name by the way, are you an Iron Maiden fan?) you can make them into lines using points to line and then use feature to polygon but you will need to identify and close gaps manually first.

Another way to do this is to create a convex hull using Minimum Bounding Geometry, this will not hit every point but will contain every point.