Calculate distance along line

kradijaf

Got a layer containing a single interpolated line (has Z-coordinate) and a layer of points laying on the line. I want to calculate distance from beginning of the line to each point. The optimal solution would be to have the 3D distance between the line beginning and specific point as an attribute in the output table of feature layer, shp etc.

 

Any ideas how to do this?  

RPGIS

You would have to use geometry objects in order to create the lines that you are looking for. The solution you are looking for sounds like it would require a process below (or close to) if you were to code it for that particular task. There might be a combination of tools that can help you achieve this process, but it can be hard coded as well.

1. Get the start and end vertices of each line and get their x and y coordinates(you can read up on geometry objects here)
2. Use a while loop for each line and convert each start and end vertices to xy coordinates.
3. Get the xy coordinates for each point that falls on the line (may require mathematical calculations to see if the point is between the lines (basically algebra)). Skip the algebra if you are simply looking to create lines based on those points.
4. Create an array using the start xy coordinate and the closest point coordinate as the end coordinate.
5. Use the write geometries to convert array of coordinates to line.
6. Insert newly created line as record into whichever feature class.
7. Repeat process and break when both start and end xy coordinates match the original line.

There might be more steps than what I am thinking and other tools but @DanPatterson knows more than I do.