Dissolving adjacent polygons and summing attributes

[RobertWalker1951]

I have a feature layer with contiguous and non-contiguous polygons. I wish to create a new feature layer consisting of the non-contiguous polygons AND the new polygons built from merging the contiguous polygons (one new polygon for EACH of the set of adjacent polygons. I also wish to sum several of the attributes of the merged, adjacent polygons so that they become attributes of these new polygons.  Unfortunately, I do NOT have any "dissolve fields" which would make the use of the dissolve tool straightforward.  thanks 

[SeaRM]

Maybe the Near tool with the populated Distance field can help to create Dissolve Field? Then you can  use the Dissolve tool with this new field to merge adjacent polygons and sum the attributes?

[RobertWalker1951]

thanks much, will give it a try.........

[Dale_Honeycutt]

It seems to me, based on your description, that all you need to do is add a new field to your feature class and populate that field with the same values.  That is, add an integer field DISSOLVEME and calculate it to zero.