HOW TO

Alter the placement of individual graduated or proportional symbols

Last Published: April 25, 2020

Summary

Instructions provided describe how to alter the placement of individual graduated or proportional symbols. Graduated and Proportional Symbols do not currently support individual placement control for polygon and line features. Follow the steps below to convert these features to point features allowing for adjustment of their symbol placement.

Procedure

Follow the steps below.

  1. Navigate to the ArcToolBox > Data Management Tools > Features > Feature to Point tool to convert the polygons to point features. The tool creates a point output feature class from the input polygons or lines. This output feature class includes the input feature classes attributes.
  2. Edit the output points and place them where the graduated or proportional symbols are required.
  3. Generate the graduated symbols for the points instead of the original polygons or lines.

    1. Right-click the layer you want to draw showing a quantitative value in the table of contents and click Properties.
    2. Click the Symbology tab.
    3. Click Quantities and click Graduated symbols.
    4. Click the Value dropdown arrow and click the field that contains the quantitative value you want to map.
    5. Click the Normalization dropdown arrow and click a field to normalize the data. ArcMap divides this field into the Value to create a ratio.
    6. Type the minimum and maximum symbol sizes and click Classify.
    7. Click the Method dropdown arrow and click the classification method you want.
    8. Click the Classes dropdown arrow and click the number of classes you want.
    9. Optionally, click Exclusion to remove unwanted values from the classification (for example, null values or extreme outliers).
    10. Click OK on the Classification dialog box.
    11. Click OK on the Layer Properties dialog box.



    To Generate the proportional symbols for points instead of the original polygons or lines.

    1. Right-click the layer you want to draw showing a quantitative value in the table of contents and click Properties.

    2. Click the Symbology tab.

    3. Click Quantities and click Proportional symbols.

    4. Click the Value dropdown arrow and click the field that contains the quantitative value you want to map.

    5. Click the Normalization dropdown arrow and click a field to normalize the data. ArcMap divides this field into the Value to create a ratio.

    6. Click OK.




    Note:
    Placement of individual symbols can be controlled by using the Convert Features to Graphics command available in the layer context menu. The output graphic elements can be placed according to preferences.

Article ID:000007100

Software:
  • ArcMap 9 x

Get help from ArcGIS experts

Contact technical support

Download the Esri Support App

Go to download options

Discover more on this topic