Drawing Large Maps to Scale in ArcGis Pro

Question

Hello! I’ve been tasked with creating a map showing exclusively our utility lines and overlaying this feature over a real life, roughly 8 ft x 8 ft printed map over the city in question. I have the utility layer all complete, this is just more of a formatting question. The real life 8x8 map is a printed map showing the streets of the city, and the goal is to print&overlay the utility lines over this map. The printed map has a scale and I am able to measure physically how large this original printed map is. Is there a certain way going about formatting this in ArcGIS Pro? Thank you so much!

NickCooper1 · Answer

Hi Lindsay,

Yes, it's the first. The goal is to print the utility lines on a transparent sheet and physically overlay. I'll give this a shot - thanks for the response!

JonM32 · Answer

@NickCooper1

Morning Nick,

I've attached two screenshots below showing the basic steps to setup your map and layout. You'll basically want to set the scale of your map to match whatever scale the existing city map is. You can do this be using scale settings in the bottom left of the map screen in ArcGIS Pro.

Then, when you insert a layout, you can set up the size of it be using the options highlighted in the screenshot.

Hope this helps!
How to setup the layout size in ArcGIS ProHow to setup the map scale in ArcGIS Pro

LindsayRaabe_FPCWA · Answer

Interesting task. Are you printing the utility lines onto a transparent sheet and will physically overlay? Or do you have a digital copy of the physical map that you will show as a background on a new print?

I'm guessing it's the first, in which case, in ArcGIS Pro, you would create your Layout with custom page size to match your existing map, and insert your map frame to fill the layout. Then I think you would manually set the scale to match your physical map and it's just a task of panning it to the correct extent (you will likely need some sort of reference layer for this - probably just World Imagery?)