I have two DEMs that I am going create a hillshade from, and ultimately want one hillshade clipped to a county boundary. I am running into a couple problems, though.
When I try to merge the two hillshades created from the DEMs, ArcMap crashes. When I try to merge the two DEMs, ArcMap crashes. I am assuming that if I managed to get the DEMs merged, the hillshade created would cause ArcMap to crash, too.
I am using the PLTS Merge Raster Datasets tool, because for some reason the Spatial Analyst tool Raster Calculator does not appear as selectable.
Once I am able to do this and get a hillshade of the two DEMs, is there a specific function for using the county line (which is a vector fc) to clip the raster data set to?
Best Answer
I've never used the PLTS tools, and the help doesn't really give much info on how the Merge Raster Datasets works, but the Mosaic to New Raster geoprocessing tool, in the Data Management Toolbox under Raster Dataset, should work fine, and doesn't require an ArcInfo license or Spatial Analyst.
To clip your resulting mosaic without Spatial Analyst, use the Clip geoprocessing tool, also in Data Management under Raster Processing, and use the county line feature as the Output Extent. If you have the county feature selected and enable the "Use Input Features for Clipping Geometery" option, it will clip to the actual border. If you don't select the feature, it will clip the raster to the bounding box of the feature.