What can I do if XTools hangs while doing an overlay function?
XTools will hang when overlaying fairly large datasets. The point at which datasets become “fairly large” varies with the users operating system and amount of available RAM. Earlier versions of XTools did overlay operations similar to the way they are done in the Geoprocessing Extension that comes with ArcView 3.1+: Each pair of intersecting features from the input and overlay themes was overlaid and processed sequentially. Newer versions of XTools use theme-level Avenue requests wherever they can be used in place of individual feature requests. These two approaches have three major differences. The new approach is significantly faster and much less prone to errors in the output theme, but it requires more RAM. Larger datasets can use up all of the available RAM and thereby lead to a “hang” before the operation is completed.
