Is there any way to create a service area based on a line feature? I want to create a buffer that takes into account the road network, instead of a vague circle. Could I possibly extract point data from my line feature using the vertices? Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
Have you used the Service Area solver in Network Analyst? If you have and are not happy with the polygons it generated, you can bring up the properties of the service area layer and on the Line Generation tab, turn on the Generate Lines option and you will get the road lines that make up the service area from which the polygon is derived.
I have only managed to get service area to work with point data, but I want a service area for a line. Can I convert a line feature into a series of points? I know you can do it the other way around.
Well, the service area solver starts from a point location. But you could turn your line into points, i.e., either by selecting all the junctions that lie under the line and also add the line end points and then run a service area from multiple points but with the option to "Merge by break value". This will generate multiple service area polygons and then merge them together. Jay Sandhu
Check out the Feature Vertices To Points tool, which produces a new point feature class with specified vertices from lines or polygons - All, StartPoints, EndPoints, BothEnds, MidPoints, Dangles. Hope that helps. Thanks.