[GIS] Dissolve Overlapping Polygons and Combine Attributes

arcgis-desktop

I have a selection of polygons (specifically circles) in one feature class. Some of these overlap, some do not. The feature class is set up as such.

 OBJECTID   MY_KEY  SHAPE_LENGTH    SHAPE_AREA
 1          1       3141.592654     785398.1634
 2          4       3141.592654     785398.1634
 3          5       3141.592654     785398.1634
 4          8       3141.592654     785398.1634
 5          10      3141.592654     785398.1634

Polygons with MY_KEY 4 and MY_KEY 10 overlap. I want to create a new feature class that combines overlapping polygons and also creates a new field that lets me know what polygons have been combined, so I would end up with something like

SHAPE_LENGTH    SHAPE_AREA  POLYGON_KEY
3141.592654     785398.1634 POLYGON_1
4398.229716     1539380.4   POLYGON_4_10
3141.592654     785398.1634 POLYGON_5
3141.592654     785398.1634 POLYGON_8

I know that dissolve is the tool to use for combining overlapping polygons, but I do not how to achieve separate features for all non-overlapping polygons and obtaining a way to know what polygons have been combined where they do overlap.

How can I achieve this?

Best Answer

Use Intersect if you want to keep only the overlaps, and Union to keep everything. In both cases fields are added with the ID from the original polygons.

Related Question