HOW TO
In ArcGIS Pro, curved lines are common in land parcels, roadways, and other features where boundaries follow curved paths instead of straight lines. These curves are often found in various applications, such as cadastral mapping, engineering designs, and environmental studies, where precise measurements are required for accurate modeling and navigation.
This article describes several workflows to measure the length of curved lines in ArcGIS Pro.
A curve is created using the Circular Arc tool by drawing a line or polygon feature between the start and end points of the arc to measure the existing curve length. The tool calculates and displays the arc length of the curve.
Note: This method only displays the length without permanently saving the value in the attribute table. This is suitable for quick identification of a specific curved line.
The map below shows a preview of the arc as a blue line, with the corresponding arc length calculated and displayed in the Circular Arc dialog box.
In ArcGIS Pro, coordinate geometry (COGO) is used to define the geometric properties of lines and curves such as the radius, angle, arc length, and chord direction. When working with curved lines, enabling COGO updates the curve attributes, including its length, and calculates its geometric parameters. Once COGO is enabled, use the Update COGO tool to update the attributes of the curved lines.
The attribute table below displays the arc length for the COGO-enabled line feature class in ArcGIS Pro.
In this workflow, a new line feature class is created to trace the existing curve using the Trace tool. The length of the traced curve is calculated and stored in the Shape_Length field of the line feature layer.
The attribute table below displays the length of the traced curve calculated for the line feature class in the Shape_Length field.
Article ID: 000034412
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