[GIS] Changing units of buffer

Question

Desktop 10.3.1
GCS: WGS 1984

Created a Buffer of points based on a pre-specified radius from the points attribute table.

It appears all of the buffers were created with a decimal degree unit of measure…. How do I change the units of the buffer layer to miles?

Answer 1

Riffing off what @scw wrote, the buffer process will take the appended unit ("# Miles") as an input as per the ArcPy script:

arcpy.Buffer_analysis("input_points", "C:/workspace/points_buffered_10mi.shp", "10 Miles")

You could create a new string field with field calculator where you take the distance number and add " Miles" to it. The field calculation would look like (in python):

str(!field!) + " Miles"

You should then have a string field of "## Miles". Point to that new field as the distance field when you run the buffer and it should work.

EDIT: I just confirmed that this works. I made a group of points and assigned them random numbers, did the concatenation. Ran through the buffer just fine. My table looks like this:

EDIT 2, for posterity: The details on this can be found on the ArcGIS resource site here: Buffer (Analysis)