idea Rotate tool that allows you to select line or boundary segment to align against other objects' segments in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Rotate tool that allows you to select line or boundary segment to align against other objects' segments

RTPL_AU — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 00:32:21 GMT

To make pretty pictures, we sometimes want to align a boundary of an object with that of another object, potentially in another dataset.

EDITED to accommodate existing inefficient process.

It will be great if there was a quick and easy Rotate+Align tool where you can select a segment of a complex polygon or line, and the destination segment of another object and have the input rotated in place to make the segments parallel.

These objects could well be quite far apart - it will just looks better if they are aligned when looked at.

A scenario could be to align laydown pads with parcel boundaries, cattle corrals with paddocks, etc.

Example:
I want to rotate this box to be aligned with the parcel, but not coincident i.e. rotate around centroid and closest edges are parallel with the parcel.

Re: Rotate tool that allows you to select line or boundary segment to align against other objects' segments

Scott_Harris — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 18:15:25 GMT

@RTPL_AU

You can achieve this with the editing grid, snapping, and the anchors for the rotate tool.

Turn on the editing grid.
Set the grid's orientation and rotation using the command found on the grid settings pop-up - so that the grid aligns with the segment that you want to align to.
Open the Rotate tool > hold CTRL key and click to place the primary anchor on a segment of the feature you want to align > hover over somewhere along same segment > hit S key to place the secondary anchor.
Rotate until the segment is snapped to the inferred grid intersection.

Re: Rotate tool that allows you to select line or boundary segment to align against other objects' segments

RTPL_AU — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 00:39:48 GMT

Hi @Scott_Harris
Thank you for that.

Idea updated to accentuate 'quick and easy'.
Please count the number of clicks required to use the method you describe, then let's work out how my Idea can be accomplished with 4 at most (excluding enabling editing etc):

I hope that it will be:

Select object
Select Rotate-Align tool
Select to be rotated object's edge
Select to be aligned to edge. Done.

I just noted that your method does not rotate the object around its selection centriod, but the shifted alignment point.

Re: Rotate tool that allows you to select line or boundary segment to align against other objects' segments

Scott_Harris — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 13:02:40 GMT

@RTPL_AU

I agree about the number of steps, just wanted to give you and others a possible way forward until such a tool exists.