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Alteryx Designer Desktop Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Designer Desktop experts.

Creating Multi-Ring Trade Areas

ChristineB
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Created

A common application in spatial analytics is to visualize and analyze data in multi-ring trade areas. This type of analysis is helpful for analyzing data in incrementally increasing distances from a spatial object. Such examples might include quantifying the number of customers with a 10, 20, and 30 minute drivetime, analyzing the demographics of a population within certain distances of a location, or visualizing the strength of a cell tower signal with increasing distance from the tower. Depending on the analysis to be done, the multiple Trade Areas may need to be configured as non-overlapping (separate rings) as opposed to nested as concentric circles. Using the Trade Area tool , both types of spatial objects can be created!

 

Creating Multiple Trade Areas (Overlapping)

To create multiple Trade Areas as nested concentric circles, select the option to specify the Trade Area radius as a 'Specific Value' and enter the radii for each Trade Area. A polygon output will be created for each specified Trade Area Radius. The sample configuration (Figure 1) creates three polygons (5 mile radius, 10 mile radius and 15 mile radius). Polygons are visualized in the order that they are listed. To create a "bullseye", list the radii for the Trade Areas in descending order. Note that the larger Trade Areas include the areas of the smaller Trade Areas (i.e., the 10 mile radius Trade Area includes the same area specified by the 5 mile Trade Area). To avoid "double counting" of area, consider creating non-overlapping trade areas (described below).

 

Figure 1: Create multiple Trade Areas around a point spatial object with the Trade Area tool. List the multiple radii (and specify the unit of miles, kilometers or Drive Time minutes), separating each with a comma.donuts_nested_config.jpg

 

Creating Non-Overlapping Trade Areas:

To create multiple non-overlapping Trade Areas ("doughnuts"), select the option to specify the distance ranges as 'Specific Values' and enter the distance ranges for each ring. Distance intervals should be specified as ranges (0-5 and 5-10), which each range separated by a comma (Figure 2). As a result, each ring is created as an individual polygon that begins at the distance specified by the minimum of the range and ends at the distance specified by the maximum of the range.

 

Figure 2: Each "doughnut" is specified as a distance range to create non-overlapping spatial objects. The highlighted "doughnut" below represents the second distance range (5-10 miles) from a point spatial object. non-overlap_config.jpg

 

 

* For additional information on tool configuration, see the attached workflow (created in v10.6).

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6 - Meteoroid

This is a great compliment to the tool mastery trade area example . I just created the below demo. It seems simple to implement after reading the knowledge base article!

 

Multiple Trade Area - Waste Site.png