How to circle a polygon in a feature class?

[AbseenAnya]

Hello,

I have some small polygon features in a map that I want to highlight by placing circles around them. Since there are many little polygons, is there an automated way of placing circles around them? If so, is there then a way to have different colored circle around one of these polygons than all the others? Please let me know. Thank you!

Anya

[T__WayneWhitley]

Probably there is more than one way, maybe check out some of the techniques in representation or dimensioning...however; in a pinch, you could even use the Buffer tool and achieve some impressive results if you don't mind creating a 'spare' or temp fc.  If in your 'scratch' gdb, then no big deal.  Hint:  For those features clustered together you may want to 'dissolve' overlapping features - and the buffer tool will optionally do this too (or pick and choose, modifying the buffer output yourself to merge, move, etc., in your edit session).

[DanLee]

If you have an arcinfo/advanced licence, you can try one of the following ways:

Approach 1:
- Use Minimum Bounding Geometry tool (Data Management toolbox and Features toolset) with the CIRCLE option.
http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00170000003q000000
The circles generated by this tool will vary in size depending on the polygon shapes.

Approach 2:
- Use Feature To Point tool (Data Management toolbox and Features toolset) with the INSIDE option to get a point inside each polygon.
- Run Buffer on the points with a desired distance to get circles of the same size.

Does that help?