Schematic Diagram symbology and labeling

[RickAnderson]

In prior versions, labeling and symbology required a lot of configuration to create schematic attributes and properties just to get attributes from the 'real' features being diagrammed.  With version 10, all that is gone in the majority of the cases.  If your schematic diagrams are based on 'real' features in geometric networks, network datasets or any other tables managed by the GIS, then to get those 'real' attributes available, you just need to use a join.  The join gives you access to all the schematic feature fields and the related 'real' feature fields. 

Keep in mind that the steps below are usually a 1 time thing.  Do it once and never worry about it again.

Once you have generated a diagram, you can follow these steps for each layer that needs joined:

1. Right-click a schematic feature layer in the ArcMap table of contents.


2. Choose the Properties... menu option which will open the Layer Properties dialog.


3. Select the Joins & Relates tab.


4. In the Joins section, click the Add button to open the Join Data dialog.


5. In step 1 of the Join Data dialog, pick UOID from the dropdown list (this is where schematics stores the objectid of the 'real' feature).


6. In step 2 of the Join Data dialog, use the Browse button to navigate to and select the 'real' feature class associated to this schematic feature layer.


7. In step 3 of the Join Data dialog, select OBJECTID from the dropdown list.


8. Click the OK button to close the Join Data dialog. 

You can now use the Labels and Symbology tabs to setup labeling and symbology.  You will see all fields available from the schematic feature class and the related 'real' feature class.

Once you have all the symbology and labeling for you diagram configured as desired, you can right-click the diagram layer in the ArcMap table of contents and save this as a layer file.  That layer file can be applied to new diagrams you generate.  This process will copy the join information as well as the labeling and symbology setup into the new diagram.  Most customers will do this 1 time and then set this as the 'default' for their diagram template so that this is automatically done for each of the users.  To set this up as the default, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the schematic diagram layer in the ArcMap table of contents.


2. Choose the Save As Layer File... option from the menu and use the resulting dialog to choose a location in which to save this layer file.


3. Now you need to edit the schematic dataset.  Use ArcCatalog to navigate to your schematic dataset.


4. Right-click the schematic dataset and choose Edit... from the menu which will start the Schematic Dataset Editor application.


5. Use the treeview control in the schematic dataset editor to browse to your diagram template.


6. Right-click the diagram template and choose Import Default Symbology... from the menu.  Use the resulting dialog to navigate to and select the layer file you saved.


7. Save the changes to the schematic dataset

In some cases it can be useful to have several different layer files pre-configured and stored on a network share location.  These different files might be the proper symbology and labeling required when printing and sharing your diagrams with outside companies/agencies.  To apply a stored layer file to an open diagram, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the schematic diagram layer in the ArcMap table of contents.


2. Choose Schematic Layer Properties and then Import Layer Properties from the menu.


3. Use the resulting dialog to navigate to and select the desired layer file.

[RickAnderson]

***Note on this process***  If you are generating diagrams from versioned data, you will likely not want to use joins as mentioned above.  Joins don't take into account the version of the data that the diagram is generated from, it always uses default.  So the values returned may be incorrect if you have changed the values in your version since it will always return what is in default.  In versioned cases, don't use the joins.  Instead, edit your schematic dataset and just add schematic attributes that point to the fields from the gis data (associated field attribute).  This copies the data from the 'real' feature to the schematic feature during generation and update.  Now for labeling and symbology, instead of a join, it is just directly accessible as a field and the schematic feature class.  This actually has better performance as well for large diagrams.  Follow the same steps above for saving the layer file and importing as the new default for that diagram template.