1

I am trying to determine the distance in kilometers of a large number of points from a polygon which is their source. The polygon indicates a geological quarry and the points (which number more than 900) contain stone material from this quarry. I am aware that I can manually determine the distance with the ruler tool, but that would be time consuming considering there are over 900 points.There must be a tool which can determine the distance from the source for each point at the same time. Ideally what I am looking for is an attribute table that displays the kilometer distance for each point.I am using ArcMap 10.3.1. I

am fairly new to this software.

Improve this question
5
  • if you have only one polygon feature and all point features need to be measured to it, check out the near tools
    – maverickGIS
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 18:39
  • Yes, Thank you. I have been using the near tool. However, the properties for my shapefiles are not displaying the "linear unit" which means that the information that shows up in my near table are figures such as "0.161572". I would like it to display kilometers but am unaware of how to make that happen.
    – Dale Fisher
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 18:46
  • I believe the distance is calculated using the units of your projection, perhaps try reprojecting both your polygon and your points to a projection with a unit of meters, it looks like maybe currently the projection unit is decimal degrees
    – maverickGIS
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 18:48
  • @maksim I don't think the distance between two geometries will be an attribute of Dale's geometry, though... can that be done?
    – maverickGIS
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 18:51
  • Exactly, I can't add the linear unit through the geometry attribute table because it doesn't exist as one of my attributes. I'm sure it would work if I re-projected it through something with a unit of meters. On that note, any idea which projection unit I should use for that?
    – Dale Fisher
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 19:11

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
  1. Use "project features" and project both your polygon and points into a projected cooordinate system with units either in Km or m.
  2. Use the Near tool as suggested above on your newly projected datasets. Put your points in the "Input Feature" prompt and your polygon in the "Near Features".
  3. Your results will be given in the attribute table of the data you inserted in the "Input Features" box.
Improve this answer
0

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.