I'm trying to calculate pairwise river distance among 60 XY coordinates in a small region of Mexico with ArcMap 10.2.2. I have defined my projections and projected both my stream network and XY coordinate layers as projected coordinates using the NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_14N since the entire area that I am looking at falls within zone 14 as far as I can tell. I followed all the steps to start a new feature data set, imported my river network and XY layer, built a new network data set, etc. All of that seems to be fine. But when I use the Point Distance tool, specifying my XY layer as the input field and the near objects (since I want the distance between all possible combinations of my points), it always gives me decimal degrees. I also changed the Display setting in the Layer Properties to Kilometers, but that didn't help. I've tried starting from scratch with a blank map, and projecting everything in projected coordinates, but still no luck.
How do I get Point Distance to give KM or miles rather than decimal degrees?
Best Answer
These steps would help to transform shape files from GCS to project coordinate system and ensure the calculation of distance or any other function appear in projected system: