Select to view content in your preferred language

Polygons within polygons

714
1
09-12-2011 12:54 AM
AaronHodges
New Contributor
Hey everyone. I'm fairly new at GIS and having some problems getting some polygons to do what I want them to! Basically, I have two sets of polygons - a set of large polygons representing watersheds, and another set of smaller polygons representing buildings, roads, etc (impervious surfaceS). I'm trying to find the total area of these smaller polygons within each of my watersheds.

I've tried the Merge tool, with some success. However, I believe with polygons that share a watershed it only assigns the polygon to one of the watersheds. As some of my polygons are large (ie. roads)and shared between multiple watersheds, this isn't working to well.

What I'd really like is for polygons that span two or more watersheds to be broken up between them. Does anyone know how I could do this?

I am using ArcMap 10.

Thanks
aaron
0 Kudos
1 Reply
JeffreySwain
Esri Regular Contributor
I would consider using the Union tool to create the new feature that would split the polygon across the two zones.  Then you should be able to process each building.
0 Kudos