How to create connections between points and nearest roads?

Question

Hello everyone!

I have 121 centroid points and i need to create connections (lines) between them and the nearest road, in order to connect the points to the network.

I tried to follow the steps in this article: https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-create-connection-lines-between-a-point-and-a-li-000011815 but without success. In the last step, it says "Not enough points to create a line for value ..." I used the Near tool, calculated the distance, Near_X, Near_Y, but i can't create the connections.

Sorry, i don't have a lot of experience with ArcGIS Pro.

CaseyC · Answer

I see. Maybe I should try this process myself so I can see each step in action. From your screenshot of the Append Points table (result of step 9?), it looks like all of the line_points were appended to the append_points with null values.

And I apologize as I just sort of talk this out for myself, but I guess when you are trying to run the points to line tool in step 10 the tool is failing because of those null values. So it tells you that there aren't enough points to create lines.

Does your Append_Points feature plot those null value features on the map? Or do you only see the original 121 point features when you have that layer showing on your map? Sorry I'm not more help here.

Jordan_Brasher · Answer

@abranches if you're using the ConnectionNum field to create the line segments, then that field can't have null values because it's being used to connect the points. That could be the source of the issue. I would re-calculate that field to ensure there aren't any null values and try it again.

See this similar case: https://community.esri.com/t5/data-management-questions/points-to-line-tool-not-working/td-p/445463.

abranches · Answer

Hi Jordan, how are you?

Yes, I need to keep the centroid points at those locations. We are doing a study on traffic zones and instead of using the original zones which are different polygons, we are using hexagons of the same area. These points are the centroids of the hexagons that intersect any building in the study area. So we need to add these points to the traffic network.