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I have a shapefile with many non-overlapping polygons, touching each other (see sample screenshot below):

sample screenshot

All these polygons have a field called 'avg_ht' in the attribute table, which is a 32-bit float (average height of trees). Some of these polygons have to be merged with others based on the following criteria. Consider polygon1 and polygon2. They should be merged if:

  1. They are adjacent to each other
  2. abs(polygon1.avg_ht - polygon2.avg_ht) <= 1.0

Condition #2 above basically checks if the difference between the average heights of the candidate polygons is less than 1.0 units.

What is the best way to do this? I have license for the eliminate tool but am not sure if it is the best way.

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  • If three polygons in a line have heights 10-11-12 (10 and 12 not adjacent) you want to dissolve them into one?
    – Bera
    Commented Jun 22, 2018 at 11:21
  • Eliminate is a good tool to do that, you need to select all the attributes. Then you need to specify the expression as (abs( "polygon1.avg_ht"- "polygon2.avg_ht") >=1)
    – Moh
    Commented Jun 22, 2018 at 11:23
  • Yes @BERA, they should all be merged into one.
    – user7831861
    Commented Jun 22, 2018 at 13:59

1 Answer 1

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Workflow below finds edges between polygons to be used to construct larger polygons. They include outer edges and ones where difference in heights is greater than threshold:

arcpy.PolygonToLine_management("fish_net","C:/SCRATCH/outlines.shp")
arcpy.Dissolve_management("outlines", "C:/SCRATCH/edges.shp","SINGLE_PART")
arcpy.SpatialJoin_analysis("edges", "fish_net", "../SJ.shp", "JOIN_ONE_TO_MANY", "KEEP_ALL", .."SHARE_A_LINE_SEGMENT_WITH")
arcpy.Statistics_analysis("SJ", "../SCRATCH.gdb/min_max", "HEIGHT MIN;HEIGHT MAX", "TARGET_FID")
arcpy.AddJoin_management("edges", "FID", "min_max", "TARGET_FID")
# select outer edges and ones with high gradient
arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management("edges", "NEW_SELECTION", "min_max.FREQUENCY = 1 OR ( min_max.MAX_HEIGHT- min_max.MIN_HEIGHT)>1")
arcpy.FeatureToPolygon_management("edges", "...gdb/RESULT")

enter image description here

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  • It works very well, thanks a lot! The only change I had to make was using named arguments. For example, the second line became: arcpy.Dissolve_management("outlines", "C:/SCRATCH/edges.shp",multi_part="SINGLE_PART"). It would be great if you can add those edits too, to make the answer even better.
    – user7831861
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 8:08

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