Populate County name in another shapefile

[jaykapalczynski]

I am trying to think of how to populate the County name (County Polygon shapefile) in my Zip Code shapefile (polygon).

The challenge is that the Zip Code polygons sometimes cross 2 or three County Boundaries. 

I have a Zip code Poly and I want to populate a field (county) within the Zip Code shapefile with the County that it resides in.  If the Zip crosses two Counties then I guess I would have to Split the County?  Does that make sense?

Any thoughts?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

yes... makes sense, so you want a Union, but only attributes so basically a spatial join with an intersect

[jaykapalczynski]

Am I doing a Union or a Spatial Join with Intersect?

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

union would produce irregularities unless you know the border edges match... this would be like splitting a polygon

The spatial join would be the one I would try first and you will probably have a many to one situation

[jaykapalczynski]

ok gonna try that now.

[jaykapalczynski]

I get totally different numbers for each...as you alluded to..not sure why

UNION               = 1275 records

SPATIAL JOIN   = 2076 records

So trying to figure out whats up with all that.... The spatial join gives me the County Polygon...when I select a County I can see the records but they select with the WHOLE County boundary...I cant see their individual boundaries...

Thoughts?

Can I explode them out or something?  Like the UNION gives me?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

spatial join if for linking attributes, so one polygon may overlap several ones in the destination layer.  The various options in Arctoolbox's Analysis Overlay toolset give you the options when you want to deal with the combinations of geometry and attributes.  The Joins and relates tools in data management are for spatial joins and attribute joins but they don't deal with the geometry other than via selection as in the case of a spatial join.