Selecting all features for donut clip

[johnpolo]

I have a polygon with 50 lakes for which I have created a buffers polygon. I would like to clip the area that corresponds to the lakes from the buffer polygon, making donuts. I have found the reference for doing this here.

When I start an editing session in the Editor, it will not activate the Clip tool if I select all the features (lakes) in the polygon. I select all the lakes in the attribute table, by using the "Switch Selection" option, I select them by using the List by Selection option in the Table of Contents, no matter what I use for the selection method, the Clip isn't available. If I select just one of the lakes, then Clip is available. I really don't want to have to do this repeatedly and then merge the outputs. Is there a way to use Clip with more than one feature, preferably on all the features in the polygon?

[DarrenWiens2 · Accepted solution]

The real operation you're looking for is Erase, which requires Advanced Licensing (which, I assume is why using the Editing Clip tool only lets you clip one feature at a time - it would be too annoying to that for all features). If you have such licensing, great, use Erase. If not, you can Union your lakes and buffers. The output will have lots of polygons, some with lake attributes, some with buffer attributes, maybe some with both lake and buffer attributes. Start editing, select those with lake attributes, and delete.

[johnpolo]

Erase did it. Thanks, Darren.