Creating shortest line passing through points

Question

I am trying to work out a conceptual new drinking-water network for a city in ArcMap. Now that I have defined the service points in the future network, I'd like to automatically create a shortest line that passes through a subset of these points in order to achieve the shortest connecting line.

Does anyone have an idea if this is possible, and if so, how?

XanderBakker · Answer

Sounds pretty manual to me. Too bad you can't make use of the capabilities ArcGIS. I suppose one could write some Python code to find the shortest combined distance for the given points, but that would take some time or use ArcGIS Online to route the points.

PietHamelink · Answer

Thanks for the help! The problem is: I do not have an underlying network of edges to perform the route analysis, my goal is to create such a network.

I'm going to divide my study area in parts, do 'Points to Polyline'-analysis (while taking into account the order of service points) on these parts and then try to connect the parts in order to achieve a network.

XanderBakker · Answer

Converting the points into a polyline, does not take into account the shortest route. It will take the order in which the points where provided.

These type of questions are best solved with the Network Analyst by using the Route Analysis with multiple stops (your service points):

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

A tutorial can be found here:

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

Kind regards, Xander