Including polygons as part of network for ArcGIS Network Analyst?

Question

I am creating a pedestrian walking network of a downtown area.

I am digitizing line segments for paths and sidewalks, but I need to incorporate parking lots into my analysis.

So far, I have been creating multiple lines through parking lots to represent possible routes that a pedestrian might take through the lot.

This is tedious, and somewhat random.

I have my parking lots as a polygon feature class.

Is there any way for me to include these polygons in the network by snapping my walking network lines to the parking lot polygons?

Answer 1

Convert your polygon to line add to your network and use the snap tolerance setting

source: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00470000003w000000.htm

Answer 2

in water system management network analysis we had to have a stream centerline for each "pond" polygon, to hold the network information for the pond. HTH