Hi,

I need to allow the user to specify two points on a roadway which will represent the part of the roadway that's closed. Can anyone suggest a way to do this within the graphical model of MapPoint? I could assume a mouse click marks the first point of closure and the second mouse click defines the second point. But this method will surely cause user errors and frustrations, when the user is unsure of what to do next. Suggestions are welcome.

Next, I need to be able to determine if the given route, which I step through in the MapPoint.Route.Directions DataSet, has any segment which crosses over the road closure. I think the easiest would be to compare each street name in the DataSet with the road name(s) that are closed. Then if I find a match I could get fancy with GPS coordinates. But I'd love to hear any ideas about how to approach this.

Another approach would be to ask the user for the last house's address before the road closure. Then the same thing on the other end. And I will have a stretch of roadway between the addresses they defined as closed. Any suggestions about how to match this information with the streets as returned by the MapPoint.Rout.Directions DataSet?

Thanks for the help.

I'm determined to get past this shortcoming of MapPoint!

Bob

The only real "approved" way to do this is by adding Avoid Areas to the map.

Programmatically, an avoid area is a Shape object of type geoShapeRectangle which has an Avoided property with the value True.

You can add multiple avoid areas to the map, which forces mappoint to route around them. You will most likely need to use more than one avoid area unless your closed road runs truly north-south or east-west.

Your suggestion of prompting for an address would work fairly well in obtaining the start and end points, however it wouldn't get you a usable segment of roadwork. There is no standardized method of "tracing" a route either. As you may well know, there is no real programmatic method in the MapPoint API which provides access to roadway cartographic/coordinate data.

You might try coupling the map with a subset of TIGER Line data records, which would then get you the roadway segment coordinates. I've successfully implemented this in the past for a client.

HTH
Paul

I understood the Avoid Area map feature requires an intersection to be included in the area. So that makes it useless for me as I understand it. I have roads to close which include no intersection.

Are you related to HTH in Orlando? Do you do freelance work?

The avoid rectangles do not have to include intersections.

No relation. HTH is short for 'Hope this helps'

Yes, I consult and do freelance work also.

Oh. I misunderstood that key point. I read the MapPoint Help which said it must include an intersection. But very happy to learn it doesn't.

Great! So I need to create a rectangle then convince MapPoint to avoid that area, which is the easy part. If I have a brigde out, for example, why would I need multiple rectangles? Or were you giving an example of when an entire road was closed that I would need multiple rectangles to make up the whole road?

TDH
Bob

(short for "That Did Help")

Another way to skin the cat might involve my ability to query the Windows MapPoint program for intersections. I learned today that I can use Edit -> Find and enter two street names with an ampersand "&" between them and it will display the intersection of those two roads.

Is there any way to use a wildcard to get all intersections with a given street? If I could do this I could solve the more difficult task of finding what roads of cut off by a closed road.

By wildcard I mean:

Franklin St & ?
Boston
Ma

It doesn't work whtn I try this in the Window program so I'm sure the ActiveX control does not support it. But I'm wondering if there's another way to skin this cat so I can get the intersection list.

Thanks,
Bob

If I could do this I could

The reason for using multiple rectangles is the scenario that most streets do not run completely N-S or E-W. When you draw an avoid rectangle, you want to be sure you don't "clip-out" any side streets that are NOT closed. In example, let's say that 12 miles of Interstate 94 in Michigan are closed around the city of Jackson. If you draw a single avoid area to cover this 12 miles, you'll also be clipping out many service drives and minor highways.

In your scenario of a single bridge being out, a single avoid area will most likely be fine.

No - there's no wildcarding avaiable to find intersections. You could conceivably use Wilfried's "Snap To Nearest Road" algorithms to parse along a road and find intersections, but this would be very time consuming. You could also couple with TIGER Line data and determine intersections using some simple aviation formulary code.

HTH, and IGTDH (I'm Glad That Did Help)

-Paul