SpaTools: Create Buffer Around PolyLines





In the continuation of my last post about buffer around points, I have developed another tool to create buffer polygons around/along the linear AutoCAD objects such as Polylines and Splines. Buffer  is one of the vital tool of Spatial Analysis and it is often needed to create buffers along the linear features such as roads, canals, railway lines etc.


To create buffer along a polyline manually is not a One Click operation in AutoCAD rather following operations are needed to create buffer polygons along a single polyline:

  • Offset the polyline object on both sides using OFFSET command. This will create the two identical polylines on each side.
  • Creating two more polylines to close the ends of both offset lines
  • Joining all the polylines to create a closed polyline.

In case, if there are hundreds of the polylines, this operation becomes hectic. Though, merge polygons tool can be used to merge the polylines, but still it is time consuming and inefficient method.

In order to automate the process of creation of buffer polygon along linear features, “Create Buffer Around Polylines/Splines” is developed and now added to SpaTools toolbar ribbon.

SpaTools Toolbar

Click on “Create Buffer Around Polylines / Splines” to execute the command.

The buffer distance is the primary input which can be entered on the command prompt. The distance should be a non-zero positive number. The second input to the command is to select Yes or No to merge the objects. If No is selected, it will draw the buffer polygons around the selected Polyline or Spline objects and will not merge individual buffer polygons as depicted below:



If Yes is selected, it will merge all the buffer polygons. The overlapping buffer polygons will be merged together as closed Polyline object.



The updated SpaTools DLL can be downloaded from Cadomation.

Read the installation instructions from this blog. 





Comments

  1. okanlawon17 June 2020 at 16:12

    It's really good but for it not supporting line feature is only the constraint. However, you can improve on its functionality by including direction or side which is going to buffer..

    For instance, I know that buffer works with dual side for a line but it won't be new if u couldn't make an addition to your own development..

    Yours should be able to select side just the way u made it to select merging options. Most often, buffer is not needed for two sides but only one. If yours could be able to do such task then, u are a step ahead of conventional buffer tool.

    ReplyDelete

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