An overview of the Network Analyst toolbox

The Network Analyst toolbox contains tools that perform network analysis and network dataset maintenance. With the tools in this toolbox, you can maintain network datasets that model transportation networks and perform route, closest facility, service area, origin-destination cost matrix, vehicle routing problem, and location-allocation network analyses on transportation networks. Use the tools in this toolbox whenever you want to perform analysis on transportation networks.

Toolsets	Description
Analysis	The Analysis toolset contains tools used to perform analysis when using the Network Analyst extension. The toolset contains tools to create a new network analysis layer and set its analysis properties for each solver provided with the Network Analyst extension, tools to add network analysis objects to one or more network analysis classes, a tool to solve the analysis, and a tool to generate driving directions.
Network Dataset	The Network Dataset toolset contains tools used to perform network dataset maintenance tasks such as building and dissolving network datasets.
Turn Feature Class	The Turn Feature Class toolset contains tools used to build and edit turn data. The tools in the toolset allow you to create new turn feature classes, convert existing ArcView or ArcInfo Workstation turn tables to turn feature classes, and maintain the integrity of existing turn features based on their geometry or an alternate ID field in cases when the reference source features are updated.

Toolsets in the Network Analyst toolbox

Related tools

The tools within the Analysis toolset perform analyses using a network-based impedance such as travel time or distance. ArcGIS has other tools that can perform similar analyses but use straight-line distance or a raster cost surface. See Proximity_analysis for more information about these tools.