How to combine multiple overlapping polygon shapefiles into 1 - retain top most layer

Question

Working with ArcGIS 10.2...

I'm looking at geological data and have 4 separate polygon shapefiles. They all fall ontop of one another like a stack.

I need to create a single dataset from the four separate shapefiles that only has the visual geology from the display order. I do not need to include information of additional overlapping features that fall underneath a feature.

I've tried to merge, union, append, update. But I don't think it happening in the correct order.

Answer 1

Update should work in your case (WITH KEEP_BORDERS). Consider layer 1 is the "bottom" one and layer for is the top one :

1) Layer 1 updated by layer 2 = temp 1

2 ) temp 1 updated by layer 3 = temp 2

3 ) temp 3 updated by layer 4 = final result