I have a two dimensional landscape with around 2000 xy points. I also have a single contour that winds its way through the landscape. I need to know how far each point is to the line, but i ultimately need the distance estimates to be polarized, so that points to the left have a negative distance, and those to the right have positive distances. A point exactly on the contour would have a distance of zero, and points further away have larger distance values.
I have been able to obtain distances from each point to the contour using the NEAR TABLE tool. Problem is they are all positive, and there are far too many points to eyeball each point to see if it is left or right of the contour. Is there a simple method for generating a list of xy points on each side of the contour, or a more efficient was of obtaining polarized measurements?
Thanks in advance
Sean