After connecting ArcGIS Desktop to the Ready-To-Use Services, you can begin using the logistics.arcgis.com service. There you can find tools for solving route, closest facility, service area, location-allocation, and vehicle routing problems.
Using the logistics.arcgis.com service in ArcMap
The logistics.arcgis.com service contains the geoprocessing tools listed below. The links in the list connect to detailed help for running each of the tools.
Find Closest Facilities—Measures the cost of traveling between incidents and facilities and determines which are nearest to one other.
Find Routes—Finds the quickest or shortest paths to visit stops. The tool is capable of finding routes that visit several input stops in a sequence you predetermine or in the sequence that minimizes overall travel. You can group the input stops into different routes using the RouteName field, and the tool will output one route for each group of stops, allowing you to generate routes for many vehicles in a single solve operation.
Generate Service Areas—Creates an area that encompasses all accessible streets within a drive distance or drive time.
Solve Location-Allocation—Chooses one or more facility locations that most efficiently serve demand sources. Use this tool to help find the store locations that provide the most convenience to consumers, the fire station locations that reach the most citizens and property in the least amount of time, and so on.
Solve Vehicle Routing Problem—Routes an entire fleet of vehicles to visit various orders for inspections, deliveries, pickups, and so on. It minimizes the overall operating cost for the fleet.
Edit Vehicle Routing Problem—This tool is rarely used in ArcMap. It was created to support specialized dispatching applications. For simplicity, you should use Solve Vehicle Routing Problem when working in ArcMap.
These tools are capable of solving transportation network problems almost anywhere because they reference road data that covers much of the world. So it is likely you can solve problems for your area of interest. Since most of the global road data also includes traffic data, you can solve network problems while accounting for dynamic traffic conditions. For instance, you can generate a service area to see how far you can drive from a point when departing at 10:00 a.m. and compare that to a departure time of 6:00 p.m.
The steps that follow provide general guidance on performing an analysis using any one of these tools. For help on specific parameters, click the links in the list above or reference the side-panel help on the tool dialog box.
- Once you have connected to the Ready-To-Use Services, add a basemap or other reference data to ArcMap and zoom in to your study area.
- Click the Catalog button on the Standard toolbar to open the Catalog window.
- Expand Ready-To-Use Services > Logistics > World and expand the appropriate toolbox.
- Double-click a tool to open the tool dialog box and begin entering parameter values.
- Once the parameters are set, click OK.
The information from the dialog box is sent to the server. When the server has completed the task, the results are returned to ArcMap in the form of layers and, in some cases, tables.
Note
Although it's possible to add the logistics.arcgis.com tools to geoprocessing scripts, keep in mind that your account's user name and password will be visible to whomever opens the file.