Dissolve Boundaries (Map Viewer)

The Dissolve Boundaries tool finds polygons that overlap or share a common boundary and merges them to form a single polygon.

The output is a hosted feature layer.

Example

A GIS analyst requires a layer that maps the districts in the Kyushu region of Japan. However, the analyst only has a layer of Kyushu municipalities. Dissolve Boundaries can be used to create a layer of districts using the municipality layer.

Dissolved Boundaries for municipalities in Kyushu, Japan
The first image shows the input features (Kyushu Municipalities). The second image shows the output feature layer with the dissolved boundaries.

Try the Dissolve boundaries tutorial for the complete workflow.

Usage notes

Dissolve Boundaries includes configurations for input features, dissolve settings, and a result layer.

Input features

The Input features group includes the following parameter:

  • Input features specifies the polygon features to be dissolved.

Dissolve settings

The Dissolve settings group includes the following parameters:

  • Dissolve features with matching field values determines whether the tool dissolves only the polygons that overlap or share a common border and have the same field value (enabled) or all the polygons that overlap or share a common border (disabled).
  • Create multipart features determines whether the output can contain multipart polygon features, meaning multiple polygons defined as a single feature (enabled), or can only contain individual features (disabled).
  • Calculate statistics for dissolved features determines whether to calculate statistics for dissolved boundaries. If enabled, choose a number field from the input layer to summarize and the statistics to calculate for the field.
  • Summary statistics determines which number fields from the input polygon layer to summarize. Supported summary statistics include sum, minimum, maximum, mean, and standard deviation. The statistics are calculated for each boundary separately.

    Learn more about summary statistics

Result layer

The Result layer group includes the following parameters:

  • Output name determines the name of the layer that is created and added to the map. The name must be unique. If a layer with the same name already exists in your organization, the tool will fail and you will be prompted to use a different name.
  • Save in folder specifies the name of a folder in My Content where the result will be saved.

Limitations

Inputs must be a polygon layer. Lines and points cannot be dissolved within boundaries using the Dissolve Boundaries tool.

Environments

Analysis environment settings are additional parameters that affect a tool's results. You can access the tool's analysis environment settings from the Environment settings parameter group.

This tool honors the following analysis environments:

  • Output coordinate system
  • Processing extent
    Note:

    The default processing extent in Map Viewer is Full extent. This default is different from Map Viewer Classic in which Use current map extent is enabled by default.

Credits

This tool consumes credits.

Use Estimate credits to calculate the number of credits that will be required to run the tool. For more information, see Understand credits for spatial analysis.

Outputs

Dissolve Boundaries creates an output hosted feature layer with the dissolved polygon features. Depending on the tool configurations, the polygon layer includes fields with the following information:

  • Count of polygons
  • Summary statistics
  • Area

Licensing requirements

This tool requires the following licensing and configurations:

  • Creator or GIS Professional user type
  • Publisher, Facilitator, or Administrator role, or an equivalent custom role

Resources

Use the following resources to learn more: