Getting location of Milestones from Linear referenced data in ArcGIS Desktop?

Question

I have shapefile of highways, where each segment has the information indicating the starting mile and ending mile.

Using these fields, I have created Routes, using the 'Create Route' gp tool from the ArcGIS Linear Referencing Toolbar.

From this route, I want to create a shapefile/featureclass indicating the location of each milestone (placed at the integer miles; i.e 5, 6, and so on).

How do I do this?

The only way I could find was to create a dummy table and then use the 'Make Route Event Layer'; But this requires to enter all the values in the table.

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you're asking to just create mile markers at a set distance or if you want to create the points from a distance attribute. My answer covers both methods: To use the distance field from your shapefile, export your shapefile to csv then use 'Make Route Event Layer' and point to the csv. If you only want points, select points - you'll have to choose whether to use the starting or ending mile as the distance field. If you want lines (sounds like you don't), select lines and set start distance end distance.
If you want to create points along your line at a set distance, use 'Construct Points' from the editor toolbar drop-down menu. (Add a blank point feature class, start editing the point file, select your line, select Editor drop-down menu, select construct points, select distance, hit ok).

Answer 2

If you can convert your routes to features, you can then iterate over the line features and extract points at distances using postionAlongLine. There's doc on this for Geometry and other inheriting classes (like polyline).

I posted code to another question along these lines. I think it would serve here. You could omit the second argument (which identifies the first as a percentage distance and not an absolute one like you want).