topic Re: Clipping Option Not Always Available in Geoprocessing Questions

Clipping Option Not Always Available

RobertWright3 — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:51:28 GMT

This should be a simple task. I have a large simple polygon, a US County, and another shapefile of small polygons that fall within that County. I want to create "holes" in the large polygon where the small polygons occur. Here's the rub. If I select one of those polygons, and start editing the large polygon, the CLIP option is available and functions correctly. If, however, I select two or more polygons, the CLIP option is NOT available...most importantly, I would like to select ALL of the small polygons and CLIP them in a single action. When I do Select All of the small polygons, however, as when selecting just two, the CLIP option is not available. Can anyone tell me what I am going "wrong" or why this is the case.

Re: Clipping Option Not Always Available

TimWitt2 — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:55:25 GMT

Robert.

You could use the ArcGIS Help 10.1 erase tool, to do this for you. That might be quicker.

Tim

Re: Clipping Option Not Always Available

RobertWright3 — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:50:29 GMT

I stumbled onto the answer to this question...the small polygons must be merged before you can use them as a "cookie cutter" to clip holes in the larger polygon. Once I merged them, the clip option was available and functioned as anticipated.