splitting lines at intersection for entire shapefile

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07-28-2010 06:48 AM
AbrahamMooney
New Contributor
Hello,

I need to split roads (edges) at every every intersection throughout the road network shapefile.  The subsequent segments will have their original attributes (name, road-type).  This seems like a somewhat common problem but I have not found a straight-forward solution.

Thanks,
Abe
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11 Replies
BillMiller
New Contributor
There are a couple ways of doing this and of course the documentation makes it very difficult to figure it out.

1) One method is to use the Identity tool with any polygon feature class and all interestions for all lines will be automatically created based on the cluster tolerance. Other tools that use cluster tolerance will also create intersections on all your lines.

2) I think the Integrate tool does what you asking for but I'm not 100% sure.
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AbrahamMooney
New Contributor
bmiller,

Thanks for the response.  I  have just one shape file of road "edges."  Does that count as a polygon feature class?  I tried the identity tool of the analysis toolbox but I do not have two shape files to overlay on top of each other therefore they cannot "cut" each other to make the line segments I need.

As for the integrate tool of the data management tools toolbox it seems that it could make vertices at the intersection points but I don't think that helps.  I don't want to define line segments by vertices.

Thanks again,
Abe
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AbrahamMooney
New Contributor
Also, what are cluster tolerances?  Is this a matter of how close objects are  before they are considered touching?

Abe
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BillMiller
New Contributor
Sorry for the bad advice.  Let me try again here.

The tool that you are looking for is called "Feature To Line".
The documentation implies that it requires polygons as input but that is not true.

Also using the documentation to find the correct tool is a moving target because there was a toolbox function for this in the samples from the previous releases. It would be nice to have a documentation page that just describes old tools and how to find the new tool. Something like "Workstation CLEAN-LINE is now Feature-To-Line".

BTW: Cluster tolerances should be as small as possible in most cases but read the documetation on it if you want to try something higher than one foot.
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AbrahamMooney
New Contributor
Thanks for the help!
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Nguyen_HoangNam
New Contributor II
If you have ArcEditor or ArcInfo license, you can convert your shapefile to geodatabase and create topology with "must intersect" rule. If you only have Arcview license, you should convert shapefile to coverage, then you convert coverage to shapefile. Data converted to shapefile will obey to topology rules.
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LanceBedard
New Contributor
If you have an ArcEditor (or greater) license, there is a tool on the Editor menu called "Planerize Lines" which I think will do what you are wanting.  It simply breaks all lines (roads) at intersections and copies the original attributes to the resulting road fragments.

We just discovered this solution (I am a GIS long, but pretty new to ArcGIS 10) and it works great.

I hope this helps.
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SergeRafanoharana
New Contributor
Hi all,

It can be easily done using the Topology Toolbar. First you need to select the line features you want to split at intersection, then choose the Planarize Lines. Just use the default cluster tolerance then OK.

You can refer to: http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgiSDEsktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=Making_new_features_with_topology_tool...

Regards,

Sypou
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JoshWhite
Regular Contributor III
Everyone here and the original poster want to split lines at intersections.  What I am interested in doing is doing this for my utilities.  What I want is for the lines to split at asset points (valves, manholes etc) do the above tools work for this.  My networks are a mess and I need an easy way to fix this issue.
Josh White, AICP
Principal Planner

City of Arkansas City
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