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I am looking for a way to compute network distance from a given list of points to their predefined destinations. Please note, I am NOT looking for closest distance but the distance to a destination that I have specified for each point.

Is this possible using the ArcGIS network analyst extension?

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You should use Route solver, the Closest facility wouldn't give you what you need.

You are supposed to have one or two point feature class(es) with the geometries and a field for route name. If you store both source points and destination points in one feature class, you need to load the source points first (so they will get sequence of 1). After that, load destinations (each point will get a sequence of 2). This can be done by using first the Select By Attributes (so, only selected rows will be loaded).

If you store them as separate feature classes, just load them one after another (loading the source points first).

When loading points, specify the field for RouteName. If you have 100 source points and 100 destination points (that is, 100 pairs), 100 routes will be created for you in the Network Analyst window. Now you can solve the routes and you will get back information on the travel time and distance for each route.

More info about Route solver.

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  • Each of my source points has a destination assigned. However, these destinations are not unique. They are repeated, multiple source points will have the same destination. For this reason, the above solution didn't work because the points having the same destination were placed on the same route yet I need a unique route for each source point to its assigned destination.
    – ketar
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 16:31
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I have recently done something like this using the Closest Facility solve.

Input your list of points as either Facilities or Incidents, then your other destinations as the other type. Within the Analysis Settings you can set the number of facilities to find, set this to a value higher than the total destinations, and each point will be routed to each one.

You can either set it to get distance from Incident to Facility, or vice versa.

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  • I tested your method. It works, although it involves more work to perform joins to determine which of the 'found' facilities was the assigned facility for each of the incident points.
    – ketar
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 15:24
  • the joining can be a pain but the end result is good :)
    – Maksim
    Commented Jul 24, 2017 at 15:28
  • I will probably end up using a python script and the OD matrix solver to load each individual customer as origin and its assigned facility as the destination to get the distance and loop through the customer file to repeat this for each customer.
    – ketar
    Commented Jul 26, 2017 at 16:02

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