This workspace removes overlaps in polygons by merging the overlap into one of the overlapping polygons. It is very useful for locating and removing sliver features. An additional feature is the ability to ignore features where the overlap is < or > a set area.

In the workspace, a Counter gives a unique ID to each polygon.  An AreaOnAreaOverlayersplits up polygons where they overlap, creating a new polygon for each overlap. The list option is set on this transformer to ensure that each overlap polygon contains a record of the source polygon ID numbers.

A Tester is used to find overlap features with an area smaller than a set size so that only the overlaps a user wants to be removed are removed. A user might change this to test for a whole variety of situations (for example, don't merge where Feature Type = parcel boundary or where property_owner = xxxx). 

After testing, a ListExploder creates a copy of each unrequired overlap for each source polygon, with the same ID. The same Dissolver that merges the overlap will therefore also merge unwanted overlaps back into their original polygon.