Routing several locations to one destination least distance.

Question

Hello,
   I am looking to solve a seeming simple problem but as this is the first time I have used spatial analyst professionally its been some time since I have dug into this extension and I can't seem to think though it. 
 
   I am trying to solve a simple network. I have a set of locations (green dots) and I am attempting to find the shortest route to connect all dots to the destination (green square) with as much overlap as possible. 
 
  As I said before this feels like it would be easy to solve and any help would be appreciated.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29624[/ATTACH]

route.png

JoeBorgione · Answer

Thanks for the response Joe. I was thinking of using network analyst, seemed like the best tool. I have built a simple network data set that seems to work well with the toolbar. for example I can route from points to a destination and so forth. I am still getting results that don't seem to make much sense to me (I am confident this is user error) I ran a closest facility on the network and there is redundancy and lack of sharing in the result.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29628[/ATTACH]

Using NA is data intensive; of course that doesn't let the user off the hook....  😉

By data intensive I mean that connectivity, attribute values, etc all have to be up to par or you'll get less than optimal results.

davidmetzler · Answer

Thanks for the response Joe. I was thinking of using network analyst, seemed like the best tool. I have built a simple network data set that seems to work well with the toolbar. for example I can route from points to a destination and so forth. I am still getting results that don't seem to make much sense to me (I am confident this is user error) I ran a closest facility on the network and there is redundancy and lack of sharing in the result.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29628[/ATTACH]

route2.png

JoeBorgione · Answer

Hello,  
 I am looking to solve a seeming simple problem but as this is the first time I have used   spatial analyst professionally its been some time since I have dug into this extension and I can't seem to think though it.   
   
 I am trying to solve a simple network. I have a set of locations (green dots) and I am attempting to find the shortest route to connect all dots to the destination (green square) with as much overlap as possible.   
   
 As I said before this feels like it would be easy to solve and any help would be appreciated.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29624[/ATTACH]

Are you using spatial analyst or network analyst? If the latter, yes it's a relatively simple problem to solve, but you'll need to first build a network dataset set your parameters for the solver etc. If you truly are using spatial analyst, you might want to post this to the proper forum. Or use network analyst instead....