What is the best way to use my existing road dataset to find the shortest run for cable to be buried along the road right of way?

[MDB_GIS]

I have set of specified points (around 20) that the cable needs to hit. I was thinking that network analyst would be the tool to use, but after a couple of hours of playing around with it, I haven't been able to achieve what I am looking for. What is the easiest way to accomplish this?

[jcarlson]

Network analyst would be the right tool to get the shortest path that hits all 20 points. Were there other factors that you are concerned with, though, such as number of road crossings, width of ROW, etc?

[MDB_GIS]

I have two factors that I am concerned with. First I would like to be able to exclude certain road types. I can't figure out how to set up a restriction, however. Been trying for over an hour. There is absolutely no documentation on this that I have been able to find. 

The second thing I would like to do, but not 100% required is for it to prioritize routing through a polygon we have of a particular geographic area of interest. 

Edit: Just thought of an additional thing that would be nice. I would like to be able for it to make a loop if possible. Right now I can't seem to get it to do that. It is just giving me straight lines. (see below)

[jcarlson]

I'd start here, if you haven't read that yet. Add the types you need and set them to a prohibited restriction. For the polygon, I would perform a spatial intersection and create a new field, something like in_aoi so that you can add a prefer (high) restriction on those features.

[MDB_GIS]

I have seen that, but I must be missing something. What I would like to do is to "Prohibit" roads that have an owner attribute of anything other than "County" (Reason being the county doesn't own those right-of-ways and would need to coordinate accordingly with those jurisdictions). But I can't figure out how to configure that. 

[DavidPike]

Do you have an example picture and/or more info?  Network analyst is great for some things, but the accuracy of an assessment on something as precise as this will vary greatly according to the precision/accuracy and purpose of the network.  e.g. a network formed only from road centrelines will only be useful if you intend to lay the cable only on those centrelines (even then, the scale of digitisation isn't something I would trust for a question like this).   

I'm guessing you used the points as stops and generated a route?

Unless you had some precise linear referenced cable network already, I'd probably advise doing it manually.

[MDB_GIS]

In my photo above, you can see the data. The blue points are the locations we are trying to hit. I am using road centerline data, however it is accurate to within a few centimeters. I did use the points as stops to generate a route.