Quite a few people saw technical sessions in San Diego at the Users Conference where the ESRI_Optimized.style was mentioned. A number of you have written in, asking, "What exactly is it?" and "Where can I find it?"

 

The ESRI_Optimized style contains a set of symbols that provide optimized performance for display, exporting, and ArcGIS Server. This style contains a set of line and fill symbols that are designed to perform better while still matching the intent and visual character of their counterparts in the ESRI style (the default style for ArcMap). The fill symbols show an average improvement of 60 percent in draw times over those in the default style; line symbols can improve drawing times up to 58 percent. The approach was to either use the "simple" type of line symbol for the lines and the outlines of the fill symbols. In some cases the line symbols were simplified by removing extra symbol layers.

 

You can find and reference the ESRI_Optimized.style in ArcMap using either the Style References dialog or the Style Manager. This new style is installed by default with ArcGIS 9.2.

 

Why would you want to use this style? This might help if you want to speed up the display of maps that will be shown or shared on the Web. Using the symbols in the ESRI_Optimized style can help you to improve the draw time for these maps. Also, if you're editing your data or doing analysis it isn't always necessary to have the best looking looking symbology -- you just need to be able to distinguish features, usually by type and the attributes of interest. In these cases, you can create a display with adequate symbology that draws and exports more quickly than a map that uses slower drawing symbols. For additional tips on optimizing draw times, see our FAQ: How can ArcMap symbology performance be improved and maintained?

NOTE: Another way to dramtically improve drawing performance is to project your data so that it matches your data frame's coordinate system. We cover how to do this as one of the topics for the Oregon Earthquakes map in a topic called Improve drawing performance for maps with multiple data frames.

CF