I am trying to create a grid of distances from a set of address data (either in Excel or Access or even as delimited file). That is, how far are my customers from each other.

The input data has the following fields:
CustID***Address1***State***ZIP
I need a grid in the following format:

CustID1***CustID2***Distance
Has anybody done anything similar? Any pointers on how to do this will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Satish

This would be fairly straightforward programming, maybe 1-2 hours of work. Do you need road distance or could it just be as the crow flies? The latter would be even easier.

Eric

I am looking at a matrix of road distances.

Also, do you have any idea how long it would take to create a matrix/grid of say, 100 different addresses in Mappoint?

Would MapPoint be the best software to address this requirement or would a higher end GIS software like MapInfo be needed?

Thanks,
Satish

MapInfo doesn't have road data built-in. If you're looking at performing routing calcuations, I think MapPoint is the way to go. You would have 100*100 or 10,000 calculations? That might take a few minutes I don't know what routing add-ons are available for MapInfo/MapPoint to compare, you might see "Freeway" ?

Eric

Eric:

Thanks for the info. One more question: What is "Freeway"?

Satish

From a reseller's web site: "It can also be used for point-to-point drive times between a single origin and single destination point. Finally, it can produce tables between a set of one or more origins and a set of one or more destinations."

http://www.datasourcetech.com/produc...ware/drive.htm

But I don't know enough about it to recommend it for your needs..

Eric

Import the data into 2 datasets then use something like:

Dim rsA As MapPoint.Recordset
Dim rsB As MapPoint.Recordset
Dim oRte As MapPoint.Route

Set rsA = oMapControl.ActiveMap.DataSets(<First Dataset name>).QueryAllRecords
Set rsB = oMapControl.ActiveMap.DataSets(<Second dataset name>).QueryAllRecords
Set oRte = oMapControl.ActiveMap.ActiveRoute

rsA.MoveFirst
rsB.MoveFirst

While Not rsA.EOF
While Not rsB.EOF
Debug.Print "Straight Line = " & mapWhere.ActiveMap.Distance(rsA.Location, rsB.Location)

oRte.Clear
oRte.Waypoints.Add rsA.Location
oRte.Waypoints.Add rsB.Location
oRte.Calculate
Debug.Print "Route distance = " & oRte.Distance

rsB.MoveNext
Wend
rsA.MoveNext
Wend
Set rsA = Nothing
Set rsB = Nothing
Set oRte = Nothing

Which puts the straight line and road distances into the debug window. This could just as easily be appended to a flat file. Augment the data by adding a key field from the dataset (like the names of the locations would be useful ) Also may want to turn off the screen updates as they do flash around a bit when the routes are being calculated (would probably speed it up as well)

M.