How can I easily detect gaps in a polyline using arcmap 10.0 (arcview license)?

Question

I'm making routes by selecting links from a streets layer which I export as a new temporarely layer in arcmap 10. This layer which I call route_temp unfortunately can be very long and contain gaps, for instance when i forget to select very small links which are difficult to see because they are overlaid by other layers. But sometimes the route contains gaps which have to be there because a cluster is in between it. What I would like to be able of is to visiualize all the gaps in the route, so that I can judge mysel which gaps have to be filled and which gaps have to stay in the route. Can anybody help me with this question, knows a tool for this, maybe a fieldcalculator-script or something else?

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

If you have ArcEditor or ArcInfo, you can should use a topology to check for gaps and dangles. If you don't, there are some open source tools available that accomplish the same thing. What a topology does is examine your data for violations of rules that you supply it with, identifies them, and helps you correct them.

Edit: Sorry, completely missed the fact that you said you have an ArcView license in the title!

Answer 2

This is a little shot in the dark, but you could use XTools to make points at the start and end of your polyline layer. With the point layer that will be created you could run a distance matrix to calculate the distance from each point to the others. The values will be in distances. There will be zeros (when they are snapped) and large values (when there are far lines). The values in between zero and the large number would be the gaps between the polylines. This approach will allow you to zoom to the specific gap, using the point file.

Answer 3

Thank you for your answer. I think that would be a great solution for my problem. It would be enough when I had a tool that creates points at the end of each line in my polyline layer, so I could zoom to the points and judge by myself if it is a gap because of a cluster which has to be there or if it is a gap because of a link which I forgot to select. I found a tool 'feature vertices to points' at the toolbox in arcmap which i believe does kind of the same thing, but I do not have a license for that tool. So it would be nice if I could use xtool.But do you know where I can get Xtools for free, or do I have to pay for it? I never heard of it before.

I found a trial for xtools 9.1. But which tool did you mean?