Weekly Challenges
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Doing this with a suped up computer in 2024 and using the AMP engine feels a little like cheating... but within 1 meter in under 40 seconds? I'll take it 😀
My Solution attached
I got within 40m of Ned! Took over 7 minutes for the final run.
Solved! Thank you to @DataPrepChad (from 7 years ago, lol) for posting your solution. I was stuck and 1) had my T/U connected backwards and borrowed your Buffer tool idea
43 seconds
Since this challenge was posted 7 years ago, I sure hope Ned had snacks! 😂
My thought process was to similar to others -
1. Add a buffer to the roads and combine them as one object
2. Cut the buffed up road object from the state of Colorado object
3. Split that into regions
4. Filter for the region with the biggest area
5. Add a grid to that region in meters (this tripped me up because I had it on the default miles)
6. Add back the shape of the region w/ the biggest area from step 4
7. Find the distance to the nearest edge
8. Sort ascending (*another place I tripped because the distance will be negative)
9. Keep the first row and send it to the How Close Is Ned app (which I turned into a macro)
10. Winner winner chicken dinner! 7 years later. Sorry Ned.
I worked on this challenge to build my spatial tool knowledge. I was stumped trying to find a way to create polygons from lines and then finding the largest polygons. So, I took a look at the tools most everyone else used and went to work on the Grid -> Spatial Match -> Find Nearest iterations. It was a good lesson. Iteration 1 builds 3 Km Grids, 2 builds .1 Km Grids, 3 builds .01 Km Grids. It got me within .4 meters of Ned's site. Finished running in 42.1 seconds after removing Browse tools.
