Mapping Center

Symbolizing road overpasses or underpasses typically requires that you perform two data preparation steps.  First, identify which roads overpass other roads.  This may be very simple intersections between two roads, or it may include many other roads when dealing with complex highway interchanges.  Second, represent the interchanges clearly.  This task may mean simply changing feature or layer drawing order, or it can also mean knocking out or masking portions of underpassing features.  The image to the left shows the underpassing highway being masked by an overpassing street and railroad. Read More...

This is the first of three parts that cover how to symbolize roads with cased line symbols.  This first part will cover how to symbolize road centerline data so that the symbols look good, the second part will cover data modeling and symbolizing underpass/overpass relationships, and the third part will deal with symbolizing cul-de-sacs versus dead-end streets.  The primary inspiration for this task is the design of the USGS 1:24,000-scale topographic quadrangle maps. To the left is an example from the 1952 Manchester, New Hampshire map. Read More...

We received a suggestion to write a blog entry on this topic from Anna Schwabedal, who is a technical sales representative for ESRI Germany.  Anna gave us a rough idea of how this works and I was able to use that when this topic came up through Ask a Cartographer recently, and I've worked on it a bit more since in order to write this. Read More...

The Weather.style supports creating several common weather charts. These charts depict sky conditions, wind speed & direction, and precipitation. The symbols are based on weather and climate related maps and graphics designed by staff at the Center for Ocean Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA). COLA is a center jointly supported by NOAA, NSF, and NASA. This Weather style also has symbols for weather station models (Surface, Upper, Forecast), cloud cover, station wind, pressure fronts, and precipitation. Read More...

A number of maps, particularly those geared towards outdoor tourism, rely on a convention that uses standard icons to list the services or amenities that are available at some place on the map. Using cartographic representations simplifies what used to be a rather unwieldy task from the perspectives of data modeling, data management, and symbology. Read More...