Netwok Analyst - Joining multiple network datasets

[AlbertoGomez]

First, thanks for reading this thread.

Due to ESRI documentation, when the data changes the network dataset must be rebuilt.
In a small net, it is no problem because this process takes a couple of seconds/minutes.
But in my case, with a huge net (1/2 million square kilometers of roads/streets), it takes several hours.

In order to minimize this problem, the net has been divided into subnetwork datasets. So, when we have to rebuild a net, we rebuild the subnetwork and not the entire net.

And heres come the questions*:

1) Is there any way to join the subnetwork datasets into unique network?
2) Is there any other way to minimize the rebuild of a huge net?

Thank you in advance.
Best regards.

(*) We are using ArcGIS 9.3.1

[JoeBorgione]

Somewhere I read/heard that version 9.4 or 10 or what ever it's going to be called will support partial network rebuilds.

[JaySandhu]

There is no way to join sub networks into a bigger network without copying the underlying features into a new feature dataset and building the entire network.

As Joe mentioned, in version 10, there is capability to track edits by dirty areas and then the build will do an incremental re-build of the network. Also the network build algorithm has been improved to be much faster than before. To use these new capabilities, you will have to upgrade the network dataset to a newer format. There are tools to do this upgrade. Regards,

Jay Sandhu