I have two line feature classes: roads and footpaths*. Unfortunately they come from different sources and do not match up well. One is clean within itself (no erroneous dangles), but the other is not, and they do not relate cleanly to each other. Paths which should stop at roads either fall short or overshoot.
I would like to get these into a coherent dataset where road/path segments run between intersections, so that I can then go on to measure connectivity. Is there a tool/script that will snap endpoints to other nearby vertices/endpoints, and split lines if/where other lines' endpoints are snapped to their vertices? Shifting of endpoints and vertices is not a problem - a coherent network is more important.
I'm using 9.3. I don't have experience with Network Analyst or any of the Topology tools, but would be very happy to be pointed in the direction of some useful beginner resources. I looked into creating a topology but could not see which of the topology rules would be useful to my particular datasets and the issue here. The data suppliers only hold the data as shapefiles and don't seem very aware of the concept of topology...
Many thanks for any advice or links, and of course I am happy to clarify further if needed.
Katy
* rights of way across fields etc., not footpaths alongside roads
