Create lines from points arcpy

Question

I have a points shapefile, and a file that tells me which of the points have a line between them. I am using arcpy to create a new shapefile to hold the lines and then create the lines based on the specifications in the file. For creating the lines, I am reading the coords of the points from the point shapefile itself.

out_path = arcpy.env.workspace
out_name = arcpy.ValidateTableName("the_lines")
geometry_type = "POLYLINE"
has_m = "DISABLED"
has_z = "DISABLED"
spatial_reference = arcpy.Describe(points_shp).spatialReference # Use Describe to get a SpatialReference object
# Execute CreateFeatureclass
arcpy.CreateFeatureclass_management(out_path, out_name, geometry_type,spatial_reference = spatial_reference)
array = arcpy.Array()
point = arcpy.Point()
tie_shp_file = arcpy.env.workspace + "/" + out_name
insert_cursor = arcpy.InsertCursor(tie_shp_file)
feat = insert_cursor.newRow()
for line in all_lines: #all_lines is of the form array([[0, 3],[0, 7],[1, 3]) indicating line [from, to]
 #from
 point.x=coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][0]
 point.y=coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][1]
 print "FROM: " + str(pt[line[0]]) + " COORDS_X: " + str(coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][0]) + " COORDS_Y: " + str(coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][1])
 array.add(point)
 #to
 point.x=coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][0]
 point.y=coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][1]
 print "TO: " + str(pt[line[1]]) + " COORDS_X: " + str(coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][0]) + " COORDS_Y: " + str(coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][1])
 array.add(point)
 print "ARRAY: " + str(array)
 polyline=arcpy.Polyline(array)# Create a Polyline object based on the array of points
 array.removeAll() #Clear the array
 feat.shape = polyline
 insert_cursor.insertRow(feat)

coords_points is a dictionary that has the form:

 {'10': (8594242.514466941, 3330642.8703512326)...}
i.e. {'Oid_str': (x,y)}

The code is creating the required number of entries in the shapefile but no lines are being shown and the lengths of the line is shown as 0.

Where am I going wrong?

• Hornbydd: Within your for loop you need to create the from and to point objects, at the moment its simply overwriting the x and y of point. Also you only create 1 feature row BEFORE your for loop, move that within the loop.
• DotPi: I am following the answer here gis.stackexchange.com/questions/34647/… . The to and from points are getting stored in the array which is being used to create the line. And cursor.nextRow() automatically creates a new line.
• Hornbydd: OK, what's pt[]? where is that defined and what is in it?
• DotPi: pt is a list that contains the id of the point, i.e. pt=["1","2",...]

Answer 1

Your code looks OK, but you use lower case x and y instead of upper case X and Y. Maybe that could help...

Also, I recommend using

arcpy.da.InsertCursor

if you have ArcGIS 10.1 or higher, for example :

cursor = arcpy.da.InsertCursor(fc2, ("SHAPE@","ID"))
for line in lines:
 i = i+1
 coordList=[]
 coordList.append([ coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][0], coords_pts[str(pt[line[0]])][1]])
 coordList.append([ coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][0], coords_pts[str(pt[line[1]])][1]])
 polyline = arcpy.Polyline(arcpy.Array([arcpy.Point(*coords) for coords in coordList]))
 cursor.insertRow((polyline,i)))

• DotPi: changing the x and y to upper case worked!