Merging elements in the same feature class

[MikeWissner]

Hello All,

I have a "street area" polygon feature class that has a SUBTYPE attribute that distinguishes between paved roads and paved intersections.  This creates a visualization that has each intersection bordered on all four sides making the roads over symbolized.  I tried to group the values in the symbology tab, but the intersection borders remained.

How do I merge these elements to create a single object without creating a whole new feature class?

Any help or suggestions are much appreciated.



thanks, mike

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Mike,

Could you please elaborate on how your symbols look like? It is not totally clear to me 🙂 maybe you could attach a picture or two?

[MikeWissner]

I'd like to merge the intersection objects with the road objects so that they can be symbolized as one one entity (as in the st1 image).

thanks you in advance,
mike

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Mike,

If I got it right, the Dissolve tool would help you here: http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000005n000000

[MikeWissner]

Thanks Alexey,

The dissolve succeeded in combining the intersections and roads into single objects.  But how do I execute this same function so that the two different attributes combine?
If you look at the images, I want the brown intersections and the blue roads to be combined into the same object resulting in the symbolization in the second image.

Is the eliminate tool what I'm looking for?  If so, is there another option?  (I currently don't have the spatial analyst license)

[AlexeyTereshenkov · Accepted solution]

Mike,

You can either select those features which are represented by brown and green color by using the Select by Attributes menu in ArcMap and then start editing session and just merge them (Editor toolbar > Merge). This is especially useful if you want to merge the geometries of the adjacent features too.

Otherwise, select those features which are represented by brown and green color by using standard ArcMap tools and then create a new field of text type, then use the Field Calculator to calculate a value for these features (for instance, "ToBeMerged"). You can calculate some other value for the existing field you've used during the first run of the Dissolve, too. The point here is just to make these two types of features to have the same attributes, so the Dissolve tool can treat them as if they are alike (and thus shall be dissolved).

Thereafter, you can rerun the Dissolve tool. Remember to backup the data when testing the tools and editing data, so you always have an original copy of the data.

[MikeWissner]

Got it!

Thanks Alex.

I used the Editor toolbar > Merge method and it worked. 

much appreciated,
mike

[AlexeyTereshenkov]

Awesome. Sometimes the simplest way to do something is the best 🙂 please don't forget to mark the post as answered, so the thread's status can be updated.