An overview of the Visibility toolset

Available with 3D Analyst license.

The Visibility toolset features tools for performing various forms of visibility analysis, ranging from constructing shadow models and sight lines to generation of viewsheds and skylines.

License:

Certain Visibility tools are also available with a ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension license. These tools are: Observer Points, Viewshed, Geodesic Viewshed, and Visibility.

Overview of tools in the Visibility toolset

Tool	Description
Construct Sight Lines	Creates line features that represent sight lines from one or more observer points to features in a target feature class.
Geodesic Viewshed	Determines the raster surface locations visible to a set of observer features using geodesic methods.
Intervisibility	Determines the visibility of sight lines using potential obstructions defined by any combination of 3D features and surfaces.
Line Of Sight	Determines the visibility of sight lines over obstructions consisting of a surface and an optional multipatch dataset.
Observer Points	Identifies which observer points are visible from each raster surface location.
Skyline	Generates a line or multipatch feature class containing the results from a skyline or silhouette analysis.
Skyline Barrier	Generates a multipatch feature class representing a skyline barrier or shadow volume.
Skyline Graph	Calculates sky visibility and generates an optional table and polar graph.
Sun Shadow Frequency	Calculates the number of times a fixed position on a surface has its direct sight line to the sun obstructed by multipatch features.
Sun Shadow Volume	Creates closed volumes that model shadows cast by each feature using sunlight for a given date and time.
Viewshed	Determines the raster surface locations visible to a set of observer features.
Visibility	Determines the raster surface locations visible to a set of observer features, or identifies which observer points are visible from each raster surface location.