I have a shapefile of United States counties. Suppose I am interested in all counties in Georgia that border North Carolina and all counties in North Carolina that border Georgia. And, in particular, I'm interested in knowing which Georgia counties border which North Carolina counties. For example, suppose Rabun County, Georgia is along this border. I want to know which is the county that borders Rabun in North Carolina.
My ultimate goal is as follows:
I believe that Rabun, Georgia borders both Clay, North Carolina and Macon, North Carolina. I would like to then create two files. One would be the line segment of the border segment between Rabun and Clay. The other would be the line segment of the border between Rabun and Macon. I know line segments can be isolated between two bordering geographic units by using intersect. For example, if I were to intersect Rabun and Clay as two separate files, I would isolate the line segment that is their shared border.
I would like to repeat this procedure for every other pair of counties along the Georgia and North Carolina (in addition to other borders, which is why I would like to streamline the process).
Are there hints for streamlining this process? I know how to do it by brute force, but I realize it can take awhile or be inaccurate. I was just wondering if there is a more efficient way to do this.
I juse ArcMap and ArcGIS 10.1.
Thank you!
Best Answer
Share a line segment with (option)
With this method, the source and target features are considered as sharing a line segment if their geometries have at least two contiguous vertices in common.
The source and target features must be either lines or polygons.
The highlighted cyan features are selected because they share a line segment with a red feature.
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s50000002q000000
to Automate the process use ModelBuilder http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//002w00000001000000