Batch vectorization relies on user-defined settings. These settings influence the geometry of the generated features. These settings may vary depending on the type of raster data you are working with. Once you have determined the appropriate settings for your raster, you can save them within the map document or to a separate file. You will use the Vectorization Settings dialog box to apply the settings.

The Vectorization Settings dialog box lets you control how ArcScan creates new features when batch converting a raster to features.

Different intersection solutions are appropriate for different types of data. The Geometrical Intersection solution works well with images that have a lot of straight lines and right angles, like street maps or parcel maps. The Median intersection solution is useful for maps with few straight lines, such as natural resource or soil maps. The None intersection solution is good for maps that do not contain intersecting lines, such as contour maps.

You can specify the maximum width of lines in the image. ArcScan will vectorize lines narrower than this width.

The compression tolerance controls the number of vertices that are created in the new features. Higher values result in fewer vertices.

The smoothing weight controls generaliztion of the vector features. Higher values result in smoother lines and polygon boundaries.

Poor quality images may contain gaps, or certain features may be represented with dashed lines. The gap closure tolerance is a distance in pixels that is used to jump over breaks in a raster line. When you specify a gap closure distance you can also set the Fan Angle. Based on an angle you specify, the gap closure function will search within a given angle for raster lines when jumping over gaps. This can be useful in cases where the raster line you are vectorizing is curved and contains gaps.

You can also specify a size of hole in the image to ignore. Holes are usually caused by poor quality scans.

If you are tracing features that have sharp corners, you can use the resolve corners option to identify corners formed by intersecting lines up to a given angle. Corners become endpoints of features.

It may take some trial and error to determine the best settings for vectorizing a given type of raster. Once you've invested the time in doing so, you can save the settings into a style, and just load that style whenever you vectorize a raster of a given type. ArcScan provides predefined styles that are based on various types of raster data. These include contours, parcels, outlines, and polygons.