{"id":121671,"date":"2007-09-24T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T18:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/using-feature-weight-rankings-to-avoid-placing-labels-on-major-streets\/"},"modified":"2007-09-24T18:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-24T18:26:00","slug":"using-feature-weight-rankings-to-avoid-placing-labels-on-major-streets","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/mapping\/using-feature-weight-rankings-to-avoid-placing-labels-on-major-streets","title":{"rendered":"Using feature weight rankings to avoid placing labels on major streets"},"author":4351,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[22941],"tags":[38211,38421],"industry":[],"product":[],"class_list":["post-121671","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","tag-arcgis-methods","tag-maplex"],"acf":{"short_description":"By Charlie Frye, Esri Chief Cartographer\n\n\n\nNotice in the first graphic below that the labels for \"CAJON ST\" and \"CLIFTON CT\" are placed ...","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

By Charlie Frye, Esri Chief Cartographer<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Labeling<\/p>\n

Notice in the first graphic below that the labels for “CAJON ST” and “CLIFTON CT” are placed over of major streets in a way that makes them difficult to read. This graphic is derived from my recent blog entry on the Maplex Street Placement option<\/a>, and I was using the Street Placement option, but that left me with this problem. Well, this happened because\u00a0I didn’t tell the Maplex Label Engine to treat the major streets differently.<\/p>\n

\"Maplex<\/p>\n

I symbolized this map to show major streets more prominently, but\u00a0just assigning a darker, wider symbol\u00a0does not tell Maplex my intentions.\u00a0 I could change the color of my major streets to a medium gray so that you could still see the text on top of the intersections, but that isn’t ideal \u2014 I shouldn’t have to change my symbology just because Maplex did what I told it to rather than what I meant it to do.<\/p>\n

Instead I used\u00a0another feature on the labeling toolbar (feature weight rankings) to give the Maplex Label Engine\u00a0the information about what I wanted and it then produced the result in the next image.<\/p>\n

\"Maplex<\/p>\n

In this example, notice not both labels that were problems in the above image are better placed relative to the nearby major streets. The way I did this was to assign weight rankings to my label classes, specifically to my major streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The streets layer I am working with has three different line symbols, one for surface streets, which are medium gray lines, one for major streets, which are heavier black lines, and one for highways, which aren’t visible in these examples. Each kind of street my layer has a label class that defines the specific symbol and labeling rules. When I click the Label\u00a0Weight Ranking button on the labeling toolbar (shown at the top) the Weight Ranking dialog box is shown.\u00a0 Here is what it looks like for my simple map:<\/p>\n

\"Maplex<\/p>\n

I changed the feature weight for my major streets to 1000. That way no labels would be placed on top of major streets. The Maplex Label Engine uses feature weights as guidance for whether or not to place labels on top of features. Here are a few things I’ve found useful to know about setting feature weights:<\/p>\n