Euclidean distance

[StephaneTirant]

Hi

I'm having difficulty with the Euclidean distance. How do you use it to create a distance to map? how do you use it for the Euclidean distance between points, polygons or lines as input?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

If you are referring to the Euclidean distance tool, that is for raster data. 

If you are working with vector data, you might want to look at the Near tool if you have the appropriate license level

Near—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

[StephaneTirant]

Dear Dan

Yes, I am referring to euclidean distance tool. Can I use it to let say calculate the distance from agricultural land to a river?

Regards

Stephan

[StephaneTirant]

I have a set of data and I need to determine a location for a facility which should be within 500m of a river.

Can I apply the Euclidean distance by taking points/polygons or lines as input?

[curtvprice]

Yes, you can use features and they are converted to raster on the fly (using the current environment settings) for the analysis. This is discussed in the help doc that Dan linked.​

I generally don't recommend this approach as you never see how the conversion turned out - you can accidentally get results you didn't expect if you let that all happen behind the scenes. Better to convert to raster using Feature To Raster, Polygon To Raster, etc. so you know what you are working with.

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

Euclidean Distance—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

more examples are here Understanding Euclidean distance analysis—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

and yes to both, but if you just need to delineat 500 m from a river you could use

Expand—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

and simply expand by ... the number of cells * your cell width = 500

that will delineate all cells within the designated distance from the river.