Sorry for the late response, don’t know how to constrain the lines perpendicular but below is a workflow to automate drawing lines from the nearest points on the lines to the points. Your question: “Is there a way that is more automatic? what if the point is many?” Without knowing how many points, there are ill just assume 30 or around there. I would run the “Near” Analysis tool between the points and line features. - Make sure you check the “Location” feature in the near tool. Under property dropdown arrow. I would make sure you have “Near_Dist”, “Near_X”, “Near_Y”. - With the points being your input features and the Lines being the “Near” Feature”. The distance unit underneath those fields change it to be whatever unit you need. Once you run that tool, add two more fields, called Xfeat , Yfeat in the attribute table of the points features. Now we will calculate the actual X and Y coordinate of the point features. - Right click on the Xfeat field and click calculate geometry, under property click x-coordinate, set the unit of measurement, the coordinate system. - Do the for the Yfeat but under properties click y-coordinate instead. -Save Edits if needed. Once we have the x and y coordinate of the lines, and the x and y coordinates of the nearest vertex (Near_X, Near_Y) on the line feature. Run the “XY to Line” Tool - I found success using the Near_X and Y as the Start X Field and Start Y Field. And the Xfeat and Yfeat. This should help to automate drawing the lines between features at the nearest point. I do not know how to constrain the lines perpendicular, If anyone knows how to do this please respond in this comments thread. You could edit the lines to make perpendicular using techniques in this video, but then you don’t need the steps above per say. My last advice maybe to use ArcPy I think there is a way to make lines perpendicular using ArcPy, could not find anything that works. But using Chat GPT you may be able to find a solution. Best, Duke
Thanks for sharing that!!
No problem brotha!
is there a way that more automatic? what if the point is many?
Sorry for the late response, don’t know how to constrain the lines perpendicular but below is a workflow to automate drawing lines from the nearest points on the lines to the points.
Your question:
“Is there a way that is more automatic? what if the point is many?”
Without knowing how many points, there are ill just assume 30 or around there. I would run the “Near” Analysis tool between the points and line features. - Make sure you check the “Location” feature in the near tool. Under property dropdown arrow. I would make sure you have “Near_Dist”, “Near_X”, “Near_Y”. - With the points being your input features and the Lines being the “Near” Feature”. The distance unit underneath those fields change it to be whatever unit you need.
Once you run that tool, add two more fields, called Xfeat , Yfeat in the attribute table of the points features. Now we will calculate the actual X and Y coordinate of the point features. - Right click on the Xfeat field and click calculate geometry, under property click x-coordinate, set the unit of measurement, the coordinate system. - Do the for the Yfeat but under properties click y-coordinate instead. -Save Edits if needed.
Once we have the x and y coordinate of the lines, and the x and y coordinates of the nearest vertex (Near_X, Near_Y) on the line feature.
Run the “XY to Line” Tool - I found success using the Near_X and Y as the Start X Field and Start Y Field. And the Xfeat and Yfeat. This should help to automate drawing the lines between features at the nearest point.
I do not know how to constrain the lines perpendicular, If anyone knows how to do this please respond in this comments thread. You could edit the lines to make perpendicular using techniques in this video, but then you don’t need the steps above per say.
My last advice maybe to use ArcPy I think there is a way to make lines perpendicular using ArcPy, could not find anything that works. But using Chat GPT you may be able to find a solution.
Best,
Duke