By David Crowther
Question:
When I run a QGIS Geoprocessing task it keeps failing saying there is invalid geometry – what can I do to resolve this?
Answer:
QGIS has a Processing Toolbox with a multitude of tools that allow you to run both raster and Vector geoprocessing functions.
However, there can be times that you run a geoprocessing tool and you receive an error message similar to the below.
The reason that this occurs, is that the file/layer that you are processing has invalid geometry and QGIS lets you know that you must either correct the geometric errors, or you can ignore them. We would always advise that you should correct your geometric errors before continuing, however if you wish to ignore this rule then you can apply an alternate setting.
From the Settings menu choose > Options and then the Processing sub menu.
In the Processing menu choose the General section and here you can change the setting for handling invalid features from ‘Stop Algorithm’ to ‘Skip (ignore) features with invalid geometry’.
Now – the next time you run a Geoprocessing tool, even if the input layer has invalid geometry, those features will be skipped (ignored) and the task will continue to conclusion and provide you with an output!