Determine the distance between two or more points, it is one of the most basic tasks performed by the people involved in the GIS environment, distance measurements will be more accurate when the input data to be in a projected coordinate system in equidistance (UTM), especially to reduce errors in the calculation.
In this post is to determine the distance from point A to points B, C and N (in this example, each letter represents a shapefile), a process can be carried with the Point distance tool located at the proximity tools ArcToolbox.
Open the Point distance tool from the following address:
ArcToolbox > Analisys Tools > Proximity
The procedure for determining the distance between A-B, A-C and A-N is performed similarly, the required Point Distance fields are:
- Input Features, the point features from which distances to the near features will be calculated. (point A).
- Near Features, The points to which distances from the input features will be calculated (points B and C contain a single point, point N contains several points).
- Output Table, requires a directory or geodatabase to store the results.
- Search Radius (optional), optional parameter that restricts the distance calculation to a certain radius.
- The last field allows you to set the unit of measure (meters, kilometers, feet, yards, etc).
The following table shows the results of calculating the distance between the points A-N, the INPUT_FID field refers to the starting point (point A, but may also be two or more points within the same shapefile), the NEAR_FID field records nearby points (points N), and the DISTANCE field shows the distance calculation. Example: A-N12 = 3857.39 meters.
