How to clip polygons in a shapefile

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02-22-2012 11:24 AM
JeffreyVu
New Contributor
I have searched the forums but haven't found anything similar with my task. Your help, guidance would be appreciated.

I have several polygons in a shapefile with a Priority field. How do I clip the polygons based on this field?

Thanks in advance.
Jeffrey
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5 Replies
AlexeyTereshenkov
Regular Contributor III
Hi Jeffrey,

I am not sure what exactly you are trying to achieve. Could you please elaborate on the problem?
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JeffreyVu
New Contributor
Hi Alexey,

I have a feature class with 5 polygons (polygon 1-5) overlapped to each others with values 1-5 in the Priority field . I would like to clip the polygons based on WYSIWYG. The top polygon (polygon 1) will be unchanged while the polygon 2 will be clipped by the polygon 1. Polygon 3 will be clipped by polygon 1 & 2, and so on.

Regards.
Jeffrey
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YateeshKandi
New Contributor
Hi Jeffrey,

Hope you have found a way out here to clip the polygons. Can you please let me know how it has been achieved?

Thank You..

Regards,
Yateesh
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HardolphWasteneys
Occasional Contributor III
I have searched the forums but haven't found anything similar with my task. Your help, guidance would be appreciated.

I have several polygons in a shapefile with a Priority field. How do I clip the polygons based on this field?

Thanks in advance.
Jeffrey


Jeffrey,

the simplest way to do this is using the EDITOR Clip:

Assuming you have a small number of polygons in a single shapefile (or FC) with a small number of priority levels (e.g. 1 to 5) you can sequentially select single features either in the attribute table to see the priority level or manually with the edit tool (perhaps labelling the polygons with the Priority Field and then in the EDITOR menu hit Clip and using 0.0 buffer distance and the "Discard the area that intersects" option.

This will acheive what you want though limited to one clipping polygon at a time, and it will drill down through all other polygons not only in the shapefile but any others intersected as well.

The CLIP Tool in ArcToolBox will clip with multiple features selected at one time, but creates a new feature class preserving the area intersected, rather like the intersect tool, rather than chopping out the intersected area in the shapefile.


Hardolph
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JeffreyVu
New Contributor
Thanks Hardolph. I already found a solution using model builder.
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