How to create contiguous spatial objects with no overlap

[akihirokomatsu]

I have a filtered list of census blocks in a single county. I want to combine contiguous census blocks into clusters and then end up with just a list of clusters. The clusters cannot overlap with each other. How do I do this? 

[jdminton]

Do you have any data? If you have a way to determine which cluster takes precedence you might sort and try using a summarize tool with "First"  to eliminate the second cluster that is creating the overlap.

[akihirokomatsu]

Thanks for the suggestion. Currently, there isn't a way to determine which cluster takes precedence. I just want to take a list of census blocks and create contiguous clusters. I could potentially spatial match each census block with all other census blocks to create small contiguous clusters, and then spatial match each small contiguous cluster with all small contiguous clusters, and repeat a few times until I'm left with only large contiguous clusters. Is there a better solution than that?    

[jdminton]

If it doesn't matter, you can just take the "First" from each with the summarize tool. Without trying the full workflow myself, I'm not sure about your plan. It sounds achievable how you're trying to do it. You might also be able to take the which location is closer to the center of each cluster.to determine which cluster owns that location. Without some data though, I'm not exactly certain.

[akihirokomatsu · Accepted solution]

Thanks! I found a simple solution. Just take the areas, combine them into a single spatial object, then run the PolySplit tool to get contiguous clusters.