Creating raster surface data from vector data

You may have point, line, or polygon data that represents a surface. This vector data can be displayed in a 3D view but cannot be used to describe the topography of other layers. For example, you may have spot height point data that you are displaying as a point cloud but you would like to drape an aerial photograph on it.

To create a raster from vector data use the To Raster geoprocessing tools located in the Conversion Tools toolbox. For more information on the geoprocessing tools used to create a raster from vector data see: An overview of the To Raster toolset.

By creating a raster from your vector data, you can use the resulting surface for other visualization needs. There are other methods available to make this conversion, such as inverse distance weighting, kriging, and natural neighbor. See the Raster Interpolation geoprocessing tools for detailed information on the best methodology for your data.