Route calculation without using address

[Sunny]

Hello all,

Have anyone ever done a path calculation without using the physical address? I tried to do this with common apps out there, but all of them require a physical address of the start and endpoints. But for my case, I want to get a sort of navigation that can cover all of the drivable roads in the town.

For example, is there a way to select a certain part of the map and calculate the efficient path/route to cover all of the roads? It should minimize driving/walking time, distance, and reduce any overlap.

I think Google did something similar when they were mapping Google Street view. I think they did not use hundreds and thousands of physical addresses to calculate the route.

Thank you,

[DanPatterson]

duplicate of How did Google Street View did the Route calculati... - GeoNet, The Esri Community

[JaySandhu · Accepted solution]

ArcGIS allows you to route through point locations. It does not need addresses. You can place a point on the mid point on each road and optimize using the Find Best Order (Travelling Salesman). There is a GP tool called Feature To Point that can take as input a road lines feature class and output a point on each road using the Inside option.

Feature To Point (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Note that Travelling Salesman optimization works best on a discrete set of points not so good on a connected set of streets. For that you need a different set of optimization techniques called Chinese Postman solver, typically used for snow plow or residential garbage pickup.

There is a lot of documentation on the Route and the Vehicle Routing Problem Solver in the network analyst that you should get familiar with to use them efficiently.

Jay Sandhu

[Sunny]

Thank you!