topic Re: Calculating cumulative distance between points in Spatial Statistics Questions

Calculating cumulative distance between points

LouisTremblay1 — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:24:15 GMT

Greetings,

I need to calculate a cumulative distance between each points of a trajectory* (point feature class with over 50,000 points). This cumulative distance would be calculated in a field of my table.

Ultimately, my objective is to select points at a 10m interval all along the trajectory from the beginning to the end.

I hope someone can help me with this. I am totally lost in the Python language and spent a lot of time trying to find a solution.
PLEASE HELP!!

Tourbe

Re: Calculating cumulative distance between points

LouisTremblay1 — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:41:39 GMT

Well, my problem seems complicated as I don't get any answer!

Re: Calculating cumulative distance between points

T__WayneWhitley — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:48:53 GMT

You didn't say how the points are ordered in your dataset...is it safe to assume since collectively they define a 'trajectory', they are ordered from beginning to end?...as in a gps track? Your description of the problem implies you really want to work with a line or lines. Based on that assumption you can do this:

- execute Points To Line, see http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000003s000000
- use linear referencing to locate your 10 meter intervals on a route...

One way is to locate your interval points on the route fc you create out of your line fc output (from the 1st step above) by creating a table of cumulative 10 meter measures and use this table result in a route event....so, in summary, after creating your route (Create Routes tool), create your route event layer using your 10 meter measures table as the in_table (with POINT event type).

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Make_Route_Event_Layer/003m00000008000000/

There is a lot of info about linear referencing toolbox, but in your case you only need 2 tools from this toolbox - Create Routes and Make Route Event Layer.

Hope that helps.