topic Re: Finding gaps in large sidewalk network in ArcGIS Network Analyst Questions

Finding gaps in large sidewalk network

MarkHoover1 — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 16:36:35 GMT

Hello All,

I recently constructed a large sidewalk network from planimetrics and it included a lot of manual editing (connecting lines across streets, driveways etc) I know there will be some gaps in the network, where the segments did not snap properly or perhaps curb ramps that I forgot to connect across streets, that I will need to fix but I am having a difficult time figuring out the best way to do this.

I built topology on the sidewalk feature class and put in a rule for dangles. However it finds all dangles which includes all the correct dangles where the sidewalk actually ends. This resulted in over 4000 issues in the error inspector which will take too long to go through.

I know the geometric network has rules to find disconnected segments but cannot find any similar tool in the network analyst. Does anyone know of any tool that can simplify my process or perhaps best practices for managing and identifying gaps in large network datasets?

Thanks
Mark

Re: Finding gaps in large sidewalk network

BenjaminMittler — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 16:42:19 GMT

What immediately comes to mind is rebuilding the geometric network from your existing version, setting a snapping tolerance that would allow the disconnected points to snap.

Re: Finding gaps in large sidewalk network

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 17:53:24 GMT

To add to what Benjamin Mittler stated, one approach is to use Integrate (Data Management) on your sidewalk linework (and then rebuild the network dataset afterwards):

ArcGIS Help 10.1

Note that you can run this tool using only one feature class as an input if you want.

Caveats:

Make a backup copy of your data before running Integrate, as this tool does not create a new output but instead modifies the original.
Choosing the correct XY Tolerance is critical. You will probably have to do several runs to find an effective value that corrects the gaps without moving linework that you don't want moved.

Chris Donohue, GISP