Adding link to road network to use in ArcGIS Network Analyst?

Question

I have an existing road network in a shapefile. I need to add two extra links/roads.

I added these as lines to the shapefile, making sure to 'split' the line in the original network to make a junction that the new line could 'snap' to. However, when I try to build the network it doesn't work.

It works fine when I delete the new road so it must be something I am doing wrong with the new road.

Are there stages I am missing?

Do I need to fill in the attributes of the new road (length) etc., and what is the quickest way to do this if so?

The dataset has many attributes so if I need to fill them in for new links, is it possible to find out which ones are needed in order to make the network? (as a lot of information is probably not used).

Answer 1

I had a similar problem.

After creating the new roads and adding them to the network, they would still be ignored by it. I resolved this by opening editor and selecting my original, old roads shape file. Then I just traced lines over the new roads, making sure there was a terminal vertex on each of the old roads I was trying to combine.

Saved the edits, rebuilt the network, and it worked like a charm.

You will have to re-add any attribute data from the new roads layer to the newly draw lines on the old road layer.