GEOCODING
It is very seldom that stops, facilities and events come to you as a ready shape file.
More common are simple lists of names and adresses which you yourself will have to turn into a shape file:
1430 S Foothill Dr, Dominos
775 E 400 S, Pizza Hut
369 E 400 S, Papa John
302 S 700 E, Papa Murphy
To help in this process, ArcView provides a feature called geocoding and address matching.After you geocode your road theme you can match a list of addresses against it. This is very useful if you, say, maintain a database of customers and their addresses. The customer list, or lists, if you have more than one can be loaded into ArcView as text files, matched against the road theme and then added to the view as separate themes. The addresses will then appear as a point theme.
First, you need to set your road theme’s geocoding preferences:
Make the theme active,
Theme > Properties > Select Geocoding > Select US Single Range > OK > Yes
The geocoding preferences determine how ArcView locates addresses. In US Single Range, each arc segment must have a street name and a number range associated with it. In order to match an address, ArcView then first finds a matching street name with a matching number range, and locates the address accordingly at an assumed position along this segment. If your address doesn’t match any address in the road theme completely, say because of missing or misspelled street names or a number that is outside the number range, ArcView allows you to search interactively for a best match.
This is the default format. Depending on how you want to match addresses, which depends on the address format in your address list, you would choose a different address style.
Now, add the address table you want to match to your project:
Make the Project window active,
Select Tables > Add > List files of type “text” > Select adresses.txt.
Then, to match the list of adresses to the road network:
Make the View window active,
View > Geocode addresses
> Set road theme as Reference Theme
> Set adresses.txt as Address Table
> Set the field that contains the address as Address Field
> Set the field that contains the owner of the adresss place as Display Field
> Make sure the Geocoded Theme is stored in the right folder.
If you’re fairly sure that the addresses can be matched (that is, there are no errors or misspellings), click Batch Match, otherwise use Interactive Match.
A new window pops up. If the batch match is successful, click Done.
The matched addresses are now added to your view as a separate theme, and can also be loaded into the network analysis as stops, events or facilities, see above. Tip: after the addresses have been added to your view, make its attribute table active, and then use the table properties to set the alias for the address name to be Label. This way, the address name will show up in when you load the stops into the solver dialog box.