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I am working with several point datasets that I have received, with the points representing xy locations with elevation data for several levees in south Louisiana. I would like to be able to calculate the cumulative distance of each point from a point of origin. By example, if my point of origin would represent 0, the distance to point 1 is 85 feet, the distance from point 1 to point 2 is 90 feet, the distance to from point 2 to point 3 is 70 feet, then the cumulative distance for point 1 would be 85 feet, point 2 would be 175 feet, point 3 would be 245 feet, etc. And I would have to add the point of origin to several of the datasets for the purpose of consistency.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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If you're willing to work outside ArcGIS, a quick-and-dirty way is to read the sequence of (X,Y) coordinates as a pair of columns in a spreadsheet (or similarly capable computational tool, such as R), compute successive distances in a third column (use the Pythagorean Theorem), and perform a cumulative sum in a fourth column. – whuber♦ May 30 '12 at 21:14

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