Identify Overlapping Polygons

Summary

Determines whether an input polygon feature layer contains overlapping polygons, and creates new non-overlapping feature layers.

Usage

NOTE: Processing time for this tool varies depending on the number of polygons in the Input polygon features layer. To minimize processing time, consider creating a new Input polygon features layer that does not include unwanted polygons. This tool may create multiple polygon layers which will consume disk space in the Output workspace. If the Output workspace resides on a disk with limited disk space, the tool may fail during processing. To prevent this, consider changing the Output workspace to a location with sufficient available disk space, or free up disk space on the disk in which the current Output workspace resides to accommodate the new polygon layers.
This tool processes all polygons in the Input polygon features layer regardless of selections set. The ability to limit discovery of overlaps to only selected polygons is not supported in this release.
When overlapping polygons are discovered in the Input polygon features layer, the tool creates new polygon layers. The number of new layers is based on the maximum number of overlaps for any individual polygon. For example, when one or more polygons in the Input polygon features layer are overlapped by, at most, one other polygon, the tool produces two new non-overlapping polygon layers. When one or more polygons are overlapped by two other polygons, the tool produces three new non-overlapping polygons layers, etc.
When the Check for overlaps only option is enabled, no new layers are created. Therefore, the Output workspace is grayed out.

Syntax

IOP (Input_polygon_features, Output_workspace, Check_for_overlaps_only)

Parameter	Explanation	Data Type
Input_polygon_features	The vector polygon dataset upon which the overlapping polygon check will be performed.	Feature Layer
Output_workspace	The output location in which new polygon layers will be saved if overlapping polygons are present in the Input polygon features. If the Output workspace is a file folder, new layers will be saved as shapefiles. If the Output workspace is a geodatabase, new layers will be saved as geodatabase feature classes.	Workspace
Check_for_overlaps_only (Optional)	Specifies whether the process will result in new non-overlapping polygon layers. false - Non-overlapping polygon layers will be produced. This is the default. true - Non-overlapping polygon layers will not be produced. Instead, the tool will simply determine whether overlapping polygons exist in the Input polygon features layer, and, if so, the number of overlaps present. These results are reported in the tool results box.	Boolean