I'm trying to clip a 30 meter buffer polygon built around a highway line feature using a smaller 6 meter buffer that represents the actual width of the road, so that the original 30 meter buffer is actually 6 meters away from the highway line feature it was created from.

This is so I can calculate slope and land cover, etc., on the edge of the road without including the road itself.

Whenever I try this, it just clips the 30 meter buffer down to 6 meters.

Is it possible to clip a buffer off of its source feature in this way?

  • 2
    What Software are you using? – Mark Cupitt Oct 24 '14 at 5:13
  • 1
    I'm a bit unclear as to what you're trying to do. Perhaps an image would help. – Fezter Oct 24 '14 at 5:34

I figured it out, FYI, or rather I found the answer on ESRI help page:


Clip the inner buffer in an editing session rather than with the Clip tool.

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