{"id":121731,"date":"2008-08-01T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/how-to-scatter-stacked-or-clustered-marker-symbols-for-point-features\/"},"modified":"2008-08-01T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T22:20:00","slug":"how-to-scatter-stacked-or-clustered-marker-symbols-for-point-features","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/mapping\/how-to-scatter-stacked-or-clustered-marker-symbols-for-point-features","title":{"rendered":"How to scatter stacked or clustered marker symbols for point features"},"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":[38451,23211],"industry":[],"product":[],"class_list":["post-121731","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","tag-cartographic-representations","tag-map-data"],"acf":{"short_description":"By Charlie Frye, Esri Chief Cartographer\n\n\n\nOne of the most frequently recurring topics on Mapping Center is what to do with stacks or cl...","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

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

\"Point<\/p>\n

One of the most frequently recurring topics on Mapping Center is what to do with stacks or clusters of point features on maps. In August 2007, I wrote a blog posting on how to use Maplex to display coincident points<\/a>, and this worked for some scenarios, but not all.<\/p>\n

New with 9.3 is a tool called Disperse Markers<\/a>; it’s in the Cartography toolbox, in the Symbolization Refinement toolset.\u00a0 The only caveat to using this tool is that your data need to be stored in a geodatabase because the tool works on representation symbology. This will be easier for many map makers, and it will work for more scenarios than the Maplex solution did.<\/p>\n

Here is the basic procedure:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Symbolize your point features.<\/li>\n
  2. Convert the symbology to representations.<\/li>\n
  3. Run the Disperse Markers tool with your point representation layer as the input.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here is an example of my results (using the same voter data I used in the Maplex example in which each voter is represented by a point whose color is based on political party affiliation):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
    \"Scatter<\/td>\n\"Scatter<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Before<\/strong>: The points are stacked on top of each other, and there is no way know how many voters live at the same location.<\/td>\nAfter<\/strong>: The points are dispersed and it is easy to see all the voters, even those in apartment buildings versus single family dwellings.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    Some things to note:<\/p>\n