I have several separate shapefiles with polygon features. The end goal is to maintain separate shapefiles for each polygon but form a contiguous, non-overlapping coverage for my area. Basically, I guess I am trying to fill in gaps using a consistent, repeatable process.
Initially I thought I could buffer each polygon and do something like this for the overlaps: Cut off overlapping polygon areas at their cutting edge but was unable to perform using v.clean. Is there another way? Most methods I see seem to favor one polygon over the other and I'm trying for a standard or middle distance.
If a buffer is not used, I want to expand each polygon in a standardized way and have them meet at a 'midpoint' between each polygon. Is this possible? Maybe something with node snapping tolerances? I am currently using QGIS 2.16 and don't have any experience using python.