Cut (very many) polygons by (very complex) polylines

[DavidLoibl]

Hi,

is it possible to cut each polygon in a polygon-shapefile automatically by features from a polyline-shapefile (ArcGIS 10.1, ArcInfo license)?

In my example, I have a polygon-shapefile of glaciers (about 2000) and want to cut it at the ELA, which I have as a polyline, in order to retirieve accumulation and ablation areas for each glacier.

I have found several older threads on similar problems but no approach that worked without cutting each polygon by hand (which is not an option).

Kind regards,
David

[TimWitt]

Hey David,

try this http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=cd6b2d45df654245b7806a896670a431

If that doesn't work maybe look into this http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000003n000000

Hope this helps!

Tim

[JohnSobetzer]

The split polygons tool on the Advanced Editing toolbar should work if you have selected all of them.

[DavidLoibl]

Hi Tim,

thank you very much, I didn't know feature to polygon had this capability. Basically it does what I wanted.

However, both, the tool itself and the toolbox, cut the resulting polygons into numerous parts.
Is there a way to suppres this tiling?

David

[DavidLoibl]

Hi John,

thanks for the reply.

The split polygons tool does not work, giving the message "No polygons were split. Ensure the selected features form contignous rings and overlap the polygons".

The polylines are indeed not forming continous rings in many cases, e.g. because they end at the end of my study area.

David

[TimWitt]

David,

I have a feeling those 2 tools are as good as it gets. Hope I'm wrong!