Making Interactive Measurements
Included in this tutorial:
Enabling snapping to features
Accessing the Measure tool for interactive measurements
Using the Measure tool, with an example
Software version in examples: ArcGIS Pro 3.0.0
Tutorial Data: The tutorial includes demonstration with sample data available here.
Credits: L. Meisterlin with Varisa Tanti and Nikolas Michael (2022)
This tutorial demonstrates interactively (and quickly) measuring the distance between features in ArcGIS Pro using the Measure tool from the Tools toolbar. This tool will “snap” to features and describe various measurements, so long as snapping is enabled.
Enabling Snapping
To get an accurate measurement using the Measure tools, turn on the Snapping feature by right-clicking the Snapping icon located at the bottom of the application (next to the map scale). Then enable Snapping.
Turn on the Snapping feature by right-clicking the Snapping tool icon located at the bottom of the application and enabling the feature.
Accessing the Measure Tools
Access the Measure tools by clicking the Map tab in the main menu ribbon, and clicking the Measure drop-down. This will unroll the tools to interactively measure distance, area, features, direction distance, offset, and angle.
If your project includes three dimensions (z), you will also have the option to measure vertically (greyed-out in the example screenshot below).
The path to opening the Measure tool is Map > Measure.
Using the Measure Tool (with example)
Choosing one of the Measure tools (above) summons the Measure dialogue box. (In the example screenshot below, we have chosen to measure distance.)
In the Measure dialogue box, indicate the surface type (options include planar, geodesic, loxodromic, and Great Elliptic) and the units (options include metric, imperial, miles, feet, US feet, yards, kilometers, and meters).
You can hover over a point, vertex, edge, or other detected feature to get an accurate measurement. Select the point, vertex, or edge by clicking it.
In the example below, the tool is measuring distance in feet on a planar surface. The text that pops up is the measurement: 5,217.4 feet. This value can also be found in the Segment (ft) column in the Distance table in the dialogue box.
an example of the Measure tool, measuring distance in feet on a planar surface
You can use this tool to measure individual distances as well as combined segments (if, for example, you wanted to measure multiple distances that sum to describe a route). The tool’s dialogue box also indicates the direction (bearing) of the measurement path.