Q: Creating Custom Shapefiles I have the zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) ESRI shape files from the US Census Bureau that I would like to use to display data on map charts using software like tableau, SAS JMP, etc.
Each of these programs can readily recognize and plot the zip shapes in map charts, however the detail is too fine and I need to aggregate the zips into custom districts and regions that are useful for the project. For this data set districts are comprised of various zip codes, and regions are comprised of many districts.  
My question is, how can I edit the zip shape files to aggregate them into district shapes and then also aggregate the district shapes into region shapes.
Even if someone could point me to some documentation on how to do this, would greatly appreciated.
Thanks
josh

A: If you have JMP, you should be able to use this Add-in created by the JMP developers:
https://community.jmp.com/docs/DOC-7362
There is a companion blog post about it as well:
http://blogs.sas.com/content/jmp/2013/08/22/an-add-in-to-combine-jmp-map-shapes/
