how to manage symbol properties of a style in a attributive way

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03-14-2017 03:27 AM
MarcoSchwarzak2
New Contributor

We store all our geologic symbols in a esri style with about 3000 symbols for lines, polygons and points. We often have to change the backgound fill color for only a selection of 1000 symbols. Or change all colors of the symbols in the style from cmyk to rgb. Its hard to do this by hand. We can get a deeper insight of the symbols in the style- file when changing the style to a *.mdb access-db. But the symbol attributes are still hidden in a BLOB we cannot read. There must be a way to manage multiple symbol-attributes in a smarter way instead of opening each symbol and do the changes over and over. 

So there are the folowing questions:

1. Is there a way to manage the symbol attributes in a database or tabel view?

2. is there an add-in or programm reading and/or writing style-files?

3. any company or institution who has a soulution for this?

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8 Replies
TedKowal
Occasional Contributor III

The style file is simply an access database.  Change the extension to a mdb .... then you can access it like an ms access database.     Tips for editing your style files with Microsoft Access | ArcGIS Blog    <-- may help you get started

Some vb code reading style files: Style Dump 

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MarcoSchwarzak2
New Contributor

Thanks Ted! But as i already wrote i know that the style is accessible with access. I would like to know how to manage the information stored in the BLOB in the Object column (in your case). e.g. line color, line type, line thickness.... And i do want to select symbols (e.g. Fill Symbols with line thickness = 3pt) and change all to line thickness = 2.5pt. We have about 3k symbols. no way to do it by hand.

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TedKowal
Occasional Contributor III

For interpreting the binary object, you may want to contact this person esri_style_specs/specs.md at master · nyalldawson/esri_style_specs · GitHub 

Other than that I am not aware of any documentation on the binary specs?

Ted

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MarcoSchwarzak2
New Contributor

Thank You Ted! Seems to be a more difficult thing. I'm wondering why nobody developed a solution for effective symbol management. How does a cartographic company handle their styles with 10k symbols?

Anyway, thank you a lot for the GitHub Link, I will keep an eye on these guys!

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TedKowal
Occasional Contributor III

I was looking through some old vb code today and ran across this VB6 code project from ESRI it exposes how to create a style file in ArcGIS version 8.   If I am not mistaken, not much has changed with the styles since?   Maybe you will find this useful....

MarcoSchwarzak2
New Contributor

Sounds good! AFAIK there were no changes in the style. i wuld give it a try! Link? dl?

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TedKowal
Occasional Contributor III

It should be attached to my previous comment as an attachment?

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MarcoSchwarzak2
New Contributor

Ted thank you! I was at the wrong place. I will try it out as soon and give feedback! Thank you for your research!

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