Creating Laterals

[TimFields]

Good morning everyone-
I'm trying to create a sanitary sewer lateral layer in my geodatabase and I'm running into a bit of a problem. Ultimately what I'd like to do is this-

All of my assets, sanitary & water are all Gps'd and I have positioning of the laterals. How is it that I can create polylines that go directly from the GPS'd lateral locations to the existing sewer line and have it be a 90 degree angle? I've been editing and drawing the lines by hand but they're just not 100% correct. If I can get 90 it would be more accurate and better for anyone.

Thank you.

[TimWitt]

After starting the sketch of your line, right click and choose "Direction..", that might help you?

[RobertBorchert]

One of the sketch tools in the drop down menu is Right Angle.  It will only allow you to create lines at a right angle.

HOWEVER to make it work for your preexisting lines you will need to start at a vertex that is NOT the one at which you wish to make the right angle.

Here is a simple procedure.  go to the line you need to make the lateral.  I will call it pipeline

have your snapping set to line and vertex (or whatever your GPS point is)

start off a little away from the lateral point and start your lateral.  for the second vertex in the lateral click on your gps point.  then go off in whatever direction you want.  when you are done with the lateral you will need to delete the first vertice.

A second way is if you know the exact angle of the original pipeline you can use the COGO drawing tool to specify exact angles. 

Once you have your first lateral off the pipeline you can then use the cogo tool to accurately and easily draw in the rest of your lateral to where is it going.  Very helpful this if you have other elbows that are not 90 degrees.

Keep in mind though that your GPS point will probably be off by anywhere from a few inches to many several feet.  Depending on the quality of your GPS unit and the method used to capture it.

Good morning everyone-
I'm trying to create a sanitary sewer lateral layer in my geodatabase and I'm running into a bit of a problem. Ultimately what I'd like to do is this-

All of my assets, sanitary & water are all Gps'd and I have positioning of the laterals. How is it that I can create polylines that go directly from the GPS'd lateral locations to the existing sewer line and have it be a 90 degree angle? I've been editing and drawing the lines by hand but they're just not 100% correct. If I can get 90 it would be more accurate and better for anyone.

Thank you.

[TimFields]

I don't see any available options for right angle from the drop down, is this the sketch tools (editor tool bar with the pencil icon)?

One of the sketch tools in the drop down menu is Right Angle.  It will only allow you to create lines at a right angle.

HOWEVER to make it work for your preexisting lines you will need to start at a vertex that is NOT the one at which you wish to make the right angle.

Here is a simple procedure.  go to the line you need to make the lateral.  I will call it pipeline

have your snapping set to line and vertex (or whatever your GPS point is)

start off a little away from the lateral point and start your lateral.  for the second vertex in the lateral click on your gps point.  then go off in whatever direction you want.  when you are done with the lateral you will need to delete the first vertice.

A second way is if you know the exact angle of the original pipeline you can use the COGO drawing tool to specify exact angles. 

Once you have your first lateral off the pipeline you can then use the cogo tool to accurately and easily draw in the rest of your lateral to where is it going.  Very helpful this if you have other elbows that are not 90 degrees.

Keep in mind though that your GPS point will probably be off by anywhere from a few inches to many several feet.  Depending on the quality of your GPS unit and the method used to capture it.

[PaulBeurskens]

ET geowizzard has Perpendiculars from Points to Polylines, this might solve your problem.
http://www.ian-ko.com/ET_GeoWizards/UserGuide/et_geowizards_userguide.htm
(you have to look it up on the left of the site under points).

There are free trials but I find ET helpfull with a lot of GIS problems.

Hope this helps

[RobertBorchert]

It should be in your editor toolbar.

If you cannot find it just open the customize dialog and in the show commands containing dialog search for right angle.

If it still isn't there then you probably have an old version of ArcGIS and if you can then upgrade.

I don't see any available options for right angle from the drop down, is this the sketch tools (editor tool bar with the pencil icon)?

[RobertBorchert]

The way I wrote to do it by starting on an edge of the existing line and then you click on the GPS point where the lateral is it will then only allow you to go in two directions each of which are 90 degrees to the direction of current digitizing or drawing. 

So if you line is heading off at 93 degrees and you click on an edge and your next click is on the lateral on the line it will then only allow the next segment will be at 3 or 183 degrees

Yes, the right angle tool can added through customize dialogue.
http://help.arcgis.com/en%20/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//001t00000065000000.htm

It's for creating a line segment at a right angle to a previous line segment.  But isn't that tool to make sure that your features are 'squared off' from one vertex to another.  For drawing features such as Building sketches for example?  I had thought the OP wanted to create lateral lines that connect to sewer mains.  I figure since lateral lines and sewer mains are very different features they wouldn't be in the same FC...

[RobertBorchert]

Yes this way uses the existing line as a reference for the direction in which the pipe is going.  You would have to delete the first Vertex of the lateral.

HOWEVER, once all the laterals were drawn in you could select them all and use the bulk snap command to snap ENDS to the GPS points that were used to draw them.  If you first segment is only a couple of feet long you could set the tolerance to 3 feet and bulk snap them.  Just be zoomed in close enough that you would not snap things you don't want snapped.

Robert,

Yes, I see now, that does make more sense.  But if it needs to be 90 degrees (perpendicular) to the sewer main then wouldn't you still need to get reference to the sewer line you are connecting to?  And you would have created an extra piece of line too.

Well, hopefully between all the responses the OP has already figured it out. 

Best Regards,
Sol

[RobertBorchert]

To be perfectly honest I didn't even know about the perpendicular command until you mentioned it. I guess I had seen it in when you right click but it isn't something important in the way we create our GIS system and whenever this kind of precision has been required I use the COGO toolbar.  Good to learn something new.  There are so many thousands of functions available.

However, I was think about this last night and came up with an idea to draw in the laterals by the thousands that really would be a little complicated it would require a lot of precision, and it may not even work until tested. and would require some sort of extra data in the GPS point to indicate which direction you needed to go.

Well, as usual there are several ways to get to the same end result.  Think that I would prefer to just snap to the GPS point and then snap to the sewer line using the perpendicular command (CTRL + E).  Without having to delete the first vertex.  Either way, I like the other idea too, I wouldn't have thought of that 🙂  Thanks.