Curves And Lines Functionality in Pro 2.1

[TimHodson]

If you've ever used the Curves And Lines Add-in for ArcGIS Desktop to convert densified lines into circular arcs, then you may be interested in a new geoprocessing tool that was introduced with ArcGIS Pro 2.1.

This new gp tool can be found in the Editing toolbox and it is called Simplify By Straight Lines And Circular Arcs.

Check it out!

[JeremyBeasley]

Hi Tim,

I have linear segment data collected via GPS and I need to calculate the degree of curvature of each "curve". I have exported my "curves" out of my other segment data and attempted to use the Simplify by Straight Lines and Circular Arcs tool on these curves. The geoprocessing results show that it ran successfully. I used ArcCatalog to enable COGO attributes and brought the "curves" back into ArcMap 10.6.1 to use the update COGO attributes tool. When trying to run the tool against these curves, I get an error stating that it couldn't update the COGO attributes due to lack of arcs or improper attributes. I can use the editor toolbar to digitize over the existing curves with the create circular arcs and update the COGO attributes and they populate correctly. Any idea as to why the Simplify by Straight Lines and Circular Arcs tool is not creating the circular arcs when it is enabled in the toolbox as an option?

V/r,

Jeremy

[TimHodson]

Hi Jeremy, after running the Simplify By Straight Lines and Circular Arcs, you should be able to check to see if the geometry was actually converted to circular arcs by bringing it into an edit sketch. If the resulting geometry has more than one connected circular arc and/or straight line per single feature, then that would be one explanation for the message that you see in ArcMap 10.6.1 Update COGO Attributes tool. If this is the case, then you would need to run the Split Line at Vertices GP tool after running the Simplify By ...Circular Arcs tool, to get individual features for the circular arc segments.

-Tim

[MichaelVolz]

Tim:

Was Rev 4.4 in December 2016 the last revision that was made to the ArcMap Curves and Lines Add-In?

Is the Simplify By Straight Lines and Circular Arcs gp tool in Pro supposed to have functional equivalency to the ArcMap Add-In?

[TimHodson]

Mike, the latest available version of the Curves And Lines Add-in for ArcMap is 4.5, updated about 8 months ago.

The Simplify By Straight Lines and Circular Arcs will convert densified lines into one or more circular arc segments by fitting circular arcs to the straight-line segment sequences. However, the GP Tool will not split the circular arcs out into separate features. If that is the goal then the Split At Vertices gp tool can be run afterwards.

Note also, that the Simplify By Straight Lines And Circular Arcs tool ignores polylines that have parametric geometry segments, IE circular arcs, beziers, elliptical arcs. (It’s in the help under “Usage”)

-Tim

[Geodesy]

I ran across a strange irregularity in the Simplify by Straight Lines and Circular Arcs tool in ArcGIS Pro.  My database is a versioned, enterprise SDE database.  I can run the tool fine from a command line script; however, if I attempt to run the tool interactively in ArcGIS Pro, it will not work, resulting in an error stating it cannot insert features.  More strangely, if I export a subset of features to a file GDB, it will let me run interactively from Pro with no problem.  There seems to be some hang-up with running the tool in the editing version in Pro as opposed to doing the same exact thing (connecting to a version directly) within the script.

Just curious if this is expected behavior or if anyone else has had this issue.

[TimHodson]

Hi Gary, thank you for reporting this. This is a bug and has been fixed in ArcGIS Pro 2.5. (BUG-000125639)

[Geodesy]

This is excellent news!  Thanks for the follow-up.