How to identify polylines with multiple end/starting points?

Question

I'm looking for a way to programmatically identify polyline features which do not represent a 'simple' line from A to B but instead have several starting and/or end points. These are called complex network edges when working with geometric networks.

Why am I asking this? Because I have a geometric network with a feature class that is defined as only having simple network edges. But it somehow occurred that there are some 'bad' (i.e. complex) edges in there as well and I need to sort them out. Checking if the interface IComplexEdgeFeature is implemented doesn't work on the feature objects because by definition all features within that class are simple edges.

Answer 1

Try finding all polylines where IGeometryCollection.GeometryCount > 1.

I think the example for calculating vertex count could be adapted to do this with the field calculator.

Answer 2

If the end points are not marked as such, you will have to find a definition that can unambiguously identify an end point. Depending on your geometry, that may be next to impossible, because an algorithm cannot tell whether the points

y
|  A B C D
+----------x

represent a simple line

A-B-C-D

or a polyline

A-B C-D

unless you have a clear criterion that can tell B-C is a bad edge.

If end points are marked, just choose a location in your algorithm where you have to iterate through all points anyway, and mark those geometries with more than two end points.