Wednesday, 29 November 2017

cartography - what dictates the drawing order of overlapping features with in the same layer/feature class in ArcGIS?


I know that in ArcGIS drawing order is controlled by layers, and if I want to make some features be drawn on top of other features I can use definition queries to separate them into different layers and position one on top of the other.


But I was wondering (mostly out of curiosity) what dictates the drawing order of the 1000 overlapping polygons in my feature class, and if there's a way that I can control what features are displayed on top within one layer?



Answer



Normally, the features will be drawn in the order that they are returned from the database/file. This order is arbitrary and can change.


The only way that I know of to control the drawing order within a layer is to use symbol levels. With symbol levels, you can dictate the drawing order of individual symbol groups within a layer. You'll have to symbolize your layer either by categories or graduated symbols, but you could use the same style for everything if you want to.


More information on symbol levels: Working with symbol levels


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