Mapping Center : How to scatter stacked or clustered marker symbols for point features

 

How to scatter stacked or clustered marker symbols for point features

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, and this worked for some scenarios, but not all.

New with 9.3 is a tool called Disperse Markers; it's in the Cartography toolbox, in the Symbolization Refinement toolset.  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.

Here is the basic procedure:

1. Symbolize your point features.
2. Convert the symbology to representations.
3. Run the Disperse Markers tool with your point representation layer as the input.

Here is an example of my results...follow the link below for the full post and more information...

Mapping Center : How to scatter stacked or clustered marker symbols for point features