topic Re: Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer

TerkaHolubcova — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:17:51 GMT

Hello,

I would like to ask for your help. I have a polygon layer representing building blocks and a polyline layer representing borders.

I’m trying to find a way to split the polygon layer using the polyline layer. I only found the Split Features tool in editing mode, but it doesn’t seem to work for the entire layer.

It doesn’t look like it should be that complicated, so I assume I might be missing something.

Thank you,

Terka

Re: Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer

CodyPatterson — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:14:36 GMT

Hey @TerkaHolubcova

I think you may have luck using the Feature To Polygon tool, as it contains polygons for areas enclosed by input lines, so everything inside of those lines would split!

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/3.4/tool-reference/data-management/feature-to-polygon.htm

Cody

Re: Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer

TerkaHolubcova — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:43:01 GMT

Thank you @CodyPatterson , I will test it!

Re: Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer

Robert_LeClair — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 17:11:02 GMT

Another workflow I found that worked in my testing environment:

1. In the Modify Features pane, select the Split tool.
2. Click the By Feature tab.
3. For Input Features, first set your line layer as the only selectable layer in the Contents Pane.
4. Select all your lines in the lines layer.
5. Click the Target Features tab.
6. In the Contents Pane, unselect the line layer and select the polygon layer as the only selectable layer.
7. Select all your polygons.
8. Click the Split button lower right of the Split tool.
9. Unselect all selected features.
10. Turn off the visibility of your line layer and voila! All polygons split by lines.

Good luck!

Re: Split Polygon feature layer by the Polyline featur layer

TerkaHolubcova — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:11:32 GMT

Hello,

thank you so much @Robert_LeClair!

I’m sorry for the late reply. After several tests, and because the polygons may not be enclosed by lines—it could look like this (I have tons of boundary lines and I just need to split the polygons using these lines):

@CodyPatterson so I converted the polygons to polylines, trimmed the cutting border lines to match the polygons area, and then used Feature to Polygon to get the desired output.
The disadvantage of this approach is that I lose the polygon attributes and need to rejoin them via Spatial Join.

The approach from @Robert_LeClair works as well, but since I have about 4,500,000 polygons and several million lines, the selection process wasn’t very convenient and was sometimes slow.

Anyway, thank you so much for your help—it really guided me toward my workflow.

Thanks again!

Best,

Terka