nearest point for every point in a layer

Question

Hi,

I have two layers who need to be combined into one layer. One layer has firehydrants and the other has address information. For every firehydrant I need the nearest address.
Is there a (free) tool or method to achieve this or do I need to write my own tool?

thanks in advance.

Reginald

BillWinston · Answer

Greetings,

I just noticed something about the Near tool.  If you do not specify a value in the "optional" Search Radius, no features are returned when performing a point to polygon near analysis.  Not sure if this might help your problem with the same coordinate values returned for all of your features but it might be worth a try to enter a value large enough to encompass all your features and see if the result is different.

Regards,

Bill

AlejandroTongco · Answer

ArcGIS does this out of the box.  In ArcToolbox, navigate to Analysis > Proximity > Near.   This tool determines the distance from each feature in the input features to the nearest feature in the near features, within the search radius.

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00080000001q000000.htm

Regards,
Eric

Hi Eric,
I used the same Near Tool to get points-to-point NEAR_DIST, NEAR_ANGLE, NEAR_X, and NEAR_Y of zipcodes.  I'm using ArcInfo 10.  I'm getting the same NEAR_X and the same NEAR_Y values for all records!  What have I missed?
Please help.
Thanks,
Al Tongco

DanPatterson_Retired · Answer

Eric...Eric...Eric...
Please do remember that not everyone has an "out-of-the-box" version of ArcInfo, check the help

Near(Analysis)
Licensing Information
ArcView: No
ArcEditor: No
ArcInfo: Yes

so such basic GIS questions can only be answered unless you have paid the price.