How to divide a single polyline feature into multiple features based on points located on it?

Question

I have a shapefile that contains the bus route information for a city.

I want to do two things...

1. Merge all the existing rows so that just one feature represents all the routes...

2. I have a Points shapefile that overlays this polyline shapefile, I want to break the single polyline shapefile into multiple polylines based on these point locations

i.e. output will be many points each connected by individual shapefiles, preferably I would like each new shapefile to contain information regarding the points it connects.

Can someone suggest a solution preferably in QGIS but ArcGIS works too

Answer 1

In QGIS

1) put the vector in editing mode, select all the features and in the editing toolbar use the "merge features" tool

2) the dynamic segmentation plugin should do the trick

Answer 2

I have just done something similar using Arc GIS. I had a layer of linear features and a fishnet grid that I was using to split the lines, I needed to do this to ascertain the length of the linear features per fishnet polygon. I did it by intersecting the lines and the fishnet grid. This split the lines where the fishnet crossed them per polygon. I could then dissolve the linear features based upon the fishnet polygon ID field and use a statistic type of SUM to give me the total length of the lines within each polygon.

Might not be elegant but it works. Hope it helps.

Answer 3

In ArcGIS you may use ET Geowizard\Polyline\Split polyline. It gives an option for splitting by reference to other feature class.

Answer 4

Although this is not QGIS or ArcGIS, another alternative that maybe you can serve is in gvSIG the SEXTANTE tool "Split lines with points layer" (very useful for creating network segments together with "Snap points to layer").

Answer 5

Here is just another option to use in ArcGIS.

Split Lines at Points:

Splits visible, editable line features at selected point features.

Answer 6

The first step is easy to accomplish using SAGA GIS, ( and if you are on linux you could even try running the modules from Qgis)

Merge all the existing rows so that just one feature represents all the routes... Use modules>lines>Line dissolve I have a Points shape file that overlays this polyline shapefile , i want to break the single polyline shapefile into multiple polylines based on these point locations This seems much harder, especially since your points may not be exactly on the line.