I want to thank you all once again for your input and response. I have had a few requests for the "best answer" to my question.

As always, there are definitely a few ways to make this work. The way that worked for us was to use the "Water Network Editing Toolbar" and then the "Rotate Selected Junctions" tool, allowing us to then batch out the entire shapefile.

Another suggestion was proposed to me from Jamie Sardelli (Sardelli Survey), "I got your info from RIGIS-L and wanted to offer some help if possible. Have you tried to add an orientation field from your lines? I guess it depends on what software you're using on how to best do this. Also, you may need to make a line file from your polyline file to get orientation. In ArcGIS, I would add an orientation attribute to both the valve and line file. Then I would extract/transfer that orientation/azmuith attribute to the valves and then rotate the symbol per that field."

A final suggestion was given to me by Paul Jordan (DEM),"Do you have an arcgis advanced license? There’s a tool called “align marker to stroke or fill” in the cartography toolset that will do this for you."

I am guessing that all of these will work, as always, depending on what you are using it for. Kudos to this community and it's outreach. Have a good night.

On Mar 28, 2016 10:03 AM, "Jay Metzger" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi everyone,

Long time listener, first time caller. I work for PWSB (Providence Water Supply Board). We are trying to globally orient our valve's symbologies (point shapefiles) to be perpendicular to the water main (line shapefile) that it is connected to.

I fully realize that this can be done on a case by case basis by manually rotating the point's symbology, but we have 14,000 valves, and i certainly do not want to do them all manually.

My first thought is to create a field, in the Water Main layer, that will grab the "North Arrow" direction for each segment of Water Main. The points could then be rotated based on this field...

Has anyone ever done this?

Thank you for your time. I hope that this finds you all well.

Sincerely,

Jay Metzger

PWSB Sr. Draftsman
(401) 521-6300 x7261
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