Create Polylines with Cleanup Tool

When you have a bunch of arcs, lines, and polylines, you can create polygons with them (closed polylines) by using the Drawing Cleanup tool of your Map pull-down menu. First, you have to make sure that all the lines and polylines that you wish to connect/close are all at the same elevation (0 for roads, sidewalks, etc... or if contours then use appropriate elevation) and then isolate the layer(s) they're in. Use the properties window to change this and the layiso command. Then, go to your Map menu, Tools, Drawing Cleanup. A command box will appear. It will prompt you to choose Object Selection, Object Conversion, or Cleanup Options. Go to the top option first (Object Selection). Select the objects manually, then click Select. Select all the objects you wish to clean-up. When done, click OK and it will take you back to the initial command window. Next, go into Object Conversion. In the Method part, click Modify Original Objects and unclick the rest. In the Options part, do not select anything. You should only have the Modify Original Objects selected in this window. Click OK. Next, go into Cleanup Options. In the Edit Geometry part, click only these options: Delete Duplicate Objects, Erase Short Objects, Extend Undershoots, Snap Clustered Nodes, Dissolve Pseudo Nodes, and Erase Dangling Objects; accept the default Tolerance of 0.01. Do NOT click Siimplify Linear Objects. In the Correction Method part, click on Correct Automatically. Click OK. Lastly, click the Proceed button. When the computer is done click OK. You'll see some cleanup statistics afterwards which informs you of how many objects were modified, deleted or created. All the polylines/lines selected earlier should all be connected and closed now. Ready for hatching or other analysis. This is good when you're preparing for presentations when you have to hatch a whole bunch of junk (arcs, lines and polylines that are not joined).

Tip submitted by:

Pamela Brinkley
Michael Baker, Jr., Inc.