Illustrator :: Can't Make Dot To Do Work

I have an illustration that I'd like to turn into a complex dot-to-dot. It has about 1,500 anchor points.

Option 1. I first investigated to see if there was a way to simply select all anchor points, and convert them into dots... removing the line segments.

Option 2. If I could break up all the line segments at once, I could then apply a pattern brush to them that has one color for the line and a different color for the end point, and then select the color for the line and delete all that is in that color, leaving only the end points. That would work, but I can't seem to find any cutting tool that allows me to select all anchor points at once and cutting them. The scissors only lets you cut one at a time. The slice tool and all the plug ins I've looked at don't seem to do the job.

Option 3. The illustration is one continuous line. I tried to apply a pattern brush to it that has a black dot assigned to the corner segments... but, as we all know, those corner segments get distorted unless the angle is 90 degrees. I don't think this will work.

Option 4. I saw a tutorial that just selects the line and assigns a dotted line to the whole line, then expand it, and delete all the 'in-between' points... that seems very time consuming. It would be quicker I think to just use the brush tool, create a new layer, and manually go to each of the anchor points of the illustration and add the dots manually. I'm trying to avoid that.

I have 96 of these illustrations to do, so it would save me TONS of time.