Split Polyline Z at User Identified Slope %

[ScottAtherton1]

Hi All,
I am currently looking for a way to split a polyline Z file at specific slope percent. Ideally I would like break the polyline into 2 different classes greater than 20% and less than 20%. I believe ET Geowizards has some functionality to achieve this however I would prefer to do this natively within Arcmap 10.1 through Python  or some tool I am not aware of (I recently upgraded this week from 9.3), I have only limited experience with Python.
Any help on the subject would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

[EricRice]

Hi Scott,

You essentially need an attribute for slope to symbolize on right? Since your data is already 3d, you can run the Add Z Information tool, to get Min/Max/Average slope for each record. Then just symbolize using Quantities and 2 classes (using 1 of the slope fields).  Slope values are calculated in percentages for you with this tool.

Best,
Eric

[ScottAtherton1]

Thank you for your input Eric,
That wasn�??t quite what I was looking for however; I will give you some more background information on what I am trying to do with a hypothetical example. I have one Polyline Z with only one record that represents a trail. The first half of the trail is relatively easy so I would like to code that section green however at some point along the line the trail gets steeper, the slope has changed from < 20% to >20% and becomes more challenging  so I would like to display that section as red. With your method I would only be able to display the overall slope of the entire trail. I was considering breaking the trail into smaller sections and then getting the average slope of all the sections however it would make my life easier if I could just split the line exactly at the Identified Change in slope.
Hope this clarifies things
Thanks

[EricRice]

Thanks for the clarification. I had this scenario in mind, but wasn't sure so I didn't outline all that is necessary. To do this the way you want, you have to split that record into many records (each segment becomes a record). Depending on how the line was digitized and exactly where the slope split should occur, you may want to densify the line with vertices every X meters prior to splitting the line by the vertices, then do the proposed stuff from my first post. Essentially what you create is a bunch of lines that are just two point lines, which simplifies things a bit since Min/Max/Average slope will all be the same for each record.

Or, you can check out the Path Slope Tools we recently published (I checked on it while writing this). The methodology is different than proposed above, but it actually is more what you're looking for in terms of splitting at the natural slope changes. There are multiple tools - you'll want Path Slope By Reclass Values. Just use two classes.

You can read about the Path Slope tools in this blog.

Best,
Eric

[ScottAtherton1]

The Path Slope tools looks to be exactly what I am looking for thanks for showing me that; unfortunately we are working with Basic license here and not Advanced so it looks like I will be re noding polylines,
Thanks for all your help