GIS ANALYST + cadastral support

Question

I have many points that were picked by handheld GPS and I want to fit them to their relevant cadastral plots automatically.

The attribute information (plot number) for these points are exactly similar to the attribute information (plot number) for the cadastral plots.

However, I am unable to automate the process of moving the many points which are outside their relevant plots. Instead I am forced to do them manually.

I have tried spatial join but the points can't be moved to their plots.

Any idea on how to do this in arcgis9.3?

Answer 1

The first thing to do here is define your algorithm for moving the points. When a point is outside its plot, where do you want it moved to? If you only want it moved to the centroid, then there is a straightforward way to do that. Simply do a spatial join to attribute your points with the plot number of the plot they lie in. If the plot number does not match, then you replace the geometry of the point with the centroid of the plot it should be in.

If you want it moved to the nearest edge, that task is a little more difficult, but doable. You start the same way, but instead of replacing the geometry of the point with the centroid of the plot, you will need to use the Near function against only the point and its corresponding plot (using feature layer selections) and then move the point to the Near_X,Near_Y coordinate generated by the function.

If you have a different algorithm, just explain it and people here can try to figure it out.