Feature Overlap

The Find Overlapping Features tool will search and identify overlapping features. Overlapping features are any features that share two or more vertices. The search for duplicate features can be further refined to identify overlapping features with specific properties (layer, feature type, attribute, or attribute value).

To find features that share all vertices see Duplicate Features, to find features that intersect see Advanced Selection Options.

Point features can not overlap, and intersection, containment, or proximity with other types can also be found with the digitizer Advanced Selection Options

Features that overlap in the selected overlays will be identified in the Feature Overlap dialog (below), in the Overlapping feature pairs window.

This tool is available in the Analysis Menu>Find Overlapping Features..., or in the Bridge Extension toolbar button  .

The following dialog will be displayed:

To perform a basic search for all overlapping features:

To further narrow the overlapping features search by Feature Type or Attribute Value, fill out the Feature Properties section:

For example, this tool can search for buildings that have been incorrectly placed over water features. The user may select each overlapping feature pair from the Overlap Tool, and then use the Digitizer to resolve the overlap issue. Enabling the Zoom to selected Features option will pan the workspace view to selected features.

Overlays to search for overlapping Features

Specify which layers to check for overlapping features. This list will include all active overlays (selected in the Overlay Control Center). Select one or more overlays to search.

Feature Properties 1

Feature Type– All of the Global Mapper features types present in the selected overlays are listed here. For convenience, area and line features types are listed together, and given the “AREA” and “LINE” prefix respectively. Select the first feature type you would like to process, or “Any” to process all features.

Attribute– Specify an optional attribute value that the first features must have to be processed. This will be empty by default.

Feature Properties 2 Group

Same as Feature Properties 1– Check this box to search for overlapping features with the same type (and optional attribute). For example, you may wish to find building features that overlap.

Feature Type– Feature type of the second feature. For example, to find buildings that overlap rivers, set feature type 1 to building, and feature type 2 to river.

Attribute– Optional attribute of second features.

Overlapping feature pairs

After the search is performed this section will lists all of the overlapping feature pairs. Click on a list item to select the features on the map. Use the Digitizer tool to modify the features to resolve the overlap issue.

Duplicates will be auto-numbered and identified based on the Feature Labels (<Feature Name> attribute).

Search for overlapping features

Press the search for overlapping features button to perform the search. Press search again to refresh the list of overlapping features above as they are resolved.