We have a network dataset with around 300k lines.
We have a car that has to do inspections on some elements along a route. It needs to visit 500-700 elements (most of them are close to each other).
The points create one simple route but are not ordered.
The way we solve the problem is to load the points as steps and to ask for best order route (usually the first point is really the start).
It creates a good route that visits every element.
The only problem is the time it takes. About 7 minutes to 700 points.
When the points is ordered it takes a few seconds.
Is there any way to speed the best route algorithm?
Thanks
That is a lot of combination to figure out. Have you tried a
lexicographic sort on the coordinates? Or is that what you mean by sorted? You really need to limit you search radius for the next possible candidate.
Hi Dan
The route is not going in one direction only but it might be a good idea to order the points by ariel distance first and then run the route in this order.
Do you know any ready to use tool that will order the point (starting from a known point) or do I have to write it?
Thanks
short of a simple sort on the XY coordinates of the points, which may speed things up, a spanning tree from an origin point may help since it provides the shortest connections between points. I haven't experimented in a long time, but you could give this a try http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6ce9db93533345e49350d30a07fc913a (spanning tree tools) it may give you some ideas.
Mody, NA based on the well-known Dijkstra's algorithm so if you need speed you need more rules/restriction so algorithm discards useless path evaluate
Mody you can also approximate solution collapse your points of same edge in a single point ('most of them are close to each other') and then order all points after solve.
I think Domenico is on to something...your problem could be greatly simplified if you could group points or cluster them and use a representative location. If you have 5 origin points all on the same block, it really doesn't matter their individual route solutions, since they will effectively be identical...if you throw a coffee break into the mix, your grouping distance could expand to a couple of blocks. So I would follow his suggestion and have a good look at your point pattern(s) and see if there is any inherent clustering as origins and/or destinations
Hi
I think I found a great solution (Dan post gave me the idea).
We work so much with complex software that we forget how quick a computer is when it just do in memory calculation.
The code below sort the point by distance (direct distance). It is running in memory and takes less the 3 seconds for 2000 points (including reading and writing to layer).
import arcpy import sys import traceback import math points = arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0) # globals coords = [] order = [] # find the closest point that is not connected def FindClosest(x,y): global coords global order max1 = 1000000000000 closest = -1 for i in range(0, len(order)): if (order != 0): continue # noo need for sqrt - just looking for the smallest dist = math.pow((coords[0] - x),2) + math.pow((coords[1] - y),2) if (dist < max1): max1 = dist closest = i return closest try: #read into memory with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(points, ["SHAPE@X", "SHAPE@Y"]) as cursor: for row in cursor: p = [row[0],row[1]] coords.append(p) order.append(0) arcpy.AddMessage("read %s records" % len(coords)) # first record next1 = 2 order[0] = 1 x1 = coords[0][0] y1 = coords[0][1] # endless loop until we have no free points while(True): x = FindClosest(x1,y1) if(x == -1): break # done order= next1 x1 = coords # update results i = 0 with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(points, ["order1"]) as cursor: for row in cursor: row[0] = order cursor.updateRow(row) i = i + 1 #for i in range(0,len(order)): # arcpy.AddMessage("point %s order = %s" % (order,i)) except:[0] y1 = coords [1] next1 = next1 + 1