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Random point selection

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03-06-2012 05:01 PM
Cherrie-LeePhillip
New Contributor
I am working with V10 and I know enough about Arcgis to confuse myself.  I am trying to establish random points for a bird survey over 8 polygons that covers 2500 acres. These polygons represent the different habitats throughout the 2500 ac property. The points need to be at least 250m apart but at least 50m from the edge of each polygon.  I was exploring the options of random point creation or creating spatially balanced points through creating and modifying sampling and monitoring networks. 
What is my best approach to establishing these points and are my best and only options the ones I mentioned above?
Thanks.
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1 Reply
DominiqueBroux
Esri Frequent Contributor
RandomPoint geoprocessing tool seems to be the easiest way to get your result.

There are parameters for:
- the polygon (or polygons if you want a number of points by polygon)
- the number of points to be randomly generated
- the shortest distance allowed between any two randomly placed points

The missing parameter is '50m from the edge of each polygon' but that's just a matter of input polygons. A preprocessing with the buffer tool should do the trick (with a negative distance)
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