Mapping Center

You may already have the Maplex for ArcGIS Extension. It's free with an ArcInfo license of ArcGIS. Many ArcInfo users don't know this and that fact has unfortunately kept many people from taking advantage of the superior text placement capabilities in the Maplex Label Engine.

One of those capabilities is the Street Placement option, it is available for line layers. Though it is obviously for street labeling, we are often asked what exactly does it do?. Here's the answer.

First, the intention of this labeling option is to make it easy for you to tell the Maplex Label Engine that you're labeling streets, which are labeled differently from other types of line features.  Just checking the Street Placement option is all you have to do to dramatically improve the way your street line data are labeled.

The image on the left shows the default label placement for lines, notice that many of the labels are needlessly repeated.  The image on the right shows what happens if you check the Street placement option.

Here is what happens for street label placement:

1. Street features with the same name and symbol that are coterminous (share an endpoint) are combined to form a single feature.
2. Street intersections are identified, and if possible, Maplex avoids placing labels on them.
3. Labels for parallel streets are aligned along an implied axis-this effect is often called "laddering".
4. When Offset placement is chosen, Street Placement automatically adjusts the placement of stacked labels so they are centered rather than offset (see Normandie Ct in the lower left portion of the images above).

By checking the Street Placement option, two additional options are affected. Click on Properties and the Label Position tab of the Placement Properties dialog box:

1. Enables Spread Words parameter on the Label Position tab of the Placement Properties dialog box.  By changing the parameters for Word Spacing you can create an effect that looks something like this:

   

   Here is how the parameters for Word Spacing were used in this case (click on the Spread Words Properties to get to this dialog box):

   Word Spacing Maximum:  250 -- this limits the amount of spacing to preserve reading continuity while allowing some flexibility at intersections. You will need to experiment with this option, it needs at least 200 in order to provide Maplex with some wiggle room near street intersections, and the default value of zero should also provide good results in many cases.

   End of Street Clearance Preferred: 200 -- this keeps labels from colliding with other streets that meet at the end of the street (based on how Maplex combined the streets, as described above).

   End of Street Clearance Minimum:  75 -- this means that labels will not be placed any closer than 3/4s the width of a character to the end of the street.

2. Label Positions are limited four choices, here is how they would typically be used:

   • Centered Curved (Labels follow curves and are placed on centerlines or within road casings)
   • Centered Straight (Labels do not curve and are placed on from centerlines or within road casings)
   • Offset Curved (Labels are curved and offset from centerlines)
   • Offset Straight (Labels are straight and offset from centerlines)

Thus, with one or two simple steps, it is possible to use the Maplex Label Engine to produce very high quality labels for line features that are streets.