An overview of the Pairwise Overlay toolset

The Pairwise Overlay toolset contains tools that provide an alternative to a number of classic overlay tools for functional and performance considerations.

See Comparison of classic overlay tools to pairwise overlay tools for details.

Tools in the Pairwise Overlay toolset

Tool	Description
Pairwise Buffer	Creates buffer polygons around input features to a specified distance using a parallel processing approach.
Pairwise Clip	Use this tool to cut out a piece of one feature class using one or more of the features in another feature class as a cookie cutter. This is particularly useful for creating a new feature class—also referred to as study area or area of interest (AOI)—that contains a geographic subset of the features in another, larger feature class.
Pairwise Dissolve	Aggregates features based on specified attributes using a parallel processing approach.
Pairwise Erase	Computes a pairwise intersection of the input and erase features. Only those portions of the input features falling outside the erase features will be copied to the output feature class.
Pairwise Integrate	Analyzes the coordinate locations of feature vertices among features in one or more feature classes. Those that fall within a specified distance of one another are assumed to represent the same location and are assigned a common coordinate value (in other words, they are colocated). The tool also adds vertices where feature vertices are within the x,y tolerance of an edge and where line segments intersect.
Pairwise Intersect	Computes a pairwise intersection of the input features. Features or portions of features that overlap between the input feature layers or feature classes are written to the output feature class. Pairwise intersection refers to selecting one feature from the first input and intersecting it with the features in the second input that it overlaps.