How to download just your project area from a statewide layer
Statewide road, soil, and flood layers can run to hundreds of thousands of features. Taking only the part around your site saves time and failed downloads.
Why clip before you download
A statewide layer can hold hundreds of thousands of features, handed over a thousand or two at a time. Pulling all of it is slow, can fail partway on a busy server, and leaves you with a file you'll clip anyway.
What it takes by hand
Doable, but every parameter has to be right or the server quietly returns the wrong set:
- Work out your site's bounding box in the coordinate system the server expects.
- Build a spatial query with the right geometry type, input reference, and relationship.
- Page through the results like any other large pull.
- Decide what to do with the features that cross your boundary.
With MapPull
Tick "Limit to an area", then draw a box, use the current view, or type the coordinates. Each layer's count updates to what touches your box before you export, and features that cross the edge come back whole, so a parcel on the line is complete.