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Show sum of area and length for selected features

JurajKrumpolec

When selecting features (in Map or in Attribute Table) ArcGIS should automatically show the summary of area and length for selected linear or polygonal features. Area and length could be displayed by default with possibility to choose other numeric fields for summarization instead. The summary can be displayed in Attributes pane for each layer or in Attribute Table (like in Excel Status Bar). Summarized values should update immediately when selection is modified. Summarization may include sum, average, count, min, max or median.

It would be a practical tool for interactively displaying summary from existing data that I often need to quickly obtain for better decision-making without having to run geoprocessing or open another application.

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Status: Open

Comments

Ayan Palit

@JurajKrumpolec Thanks for the idea - I see a lot of value in your idea and personally use the steps outlined. Have you explored Data Engineering ? It's newish but very nifty in providing these data insights and more.

JurajKrumpolec

@AyanPalit My idea is to see summarizations of area and length immediately when features are selected without unnecessary mouse clicks. Data Engineering is a great tool, but not so interactive, as I proposed in this idea. It takes multiple mouse clicks to get the summary in Data Engineering and when the selection changes user needs to activate calculate again. Why not show these elementary values right in the status bar without any delay?

Valeria Chavez

Hi @JurajKrumpolec! Thanks for submitting this Idea. I'm wondering how this would differ from the Measure tool, in particular the Measure Features option:

CalvinHarmin

I agree that an addition of a 'native' sum of length/area of selected features in the UI (attribute pane maybe?) would be useful for me as well. Showing multiple areal units in addition to the base map unit at the same time would also be useful in my case (i.e. sq. ft, acres, sq. miles)

Aside from the Data Engineering view, I have found the closest thing to a dynamic view is to right-click the field you want to SUM in the attribute table, choose Visualize Statistics, and this creates a 'chart' element for that layer. When more than 1 feature is selected in that layer, the Chart Properties will show a SUM of the selection in addition to the statistics for the total of the dataset. If you only care about SUM of area or length field then setting a Bin of 1 may speed up the calculation.

JurajKrumpolec

Hi @ValeriaChavez,

thank you for your interest in this idea. The difference between my idea and Measure Features tool is quite fundamental. These are the main differences:

The first is the workflow. When I work with or evaluate features, the primary tool for me is Select tool - I select the features and then do some changes (change attributes, move, delete or whatever). And before doing these changes, there is always good to have some additional information (e. g. summary) to be in better control. But ArcGIS shows only how many features are selected. With suggested summary (area, length, volume), there would be instantly more information about selected features for decision-making. My suggestion is to make summary available naturally (displayed in the background) when selecting features (in Map for selected layer in Contents pane or in Attribute Table for opened layer) as additional information without having to launch a new tool. On the other hand, when I want to sum features with Measure Features tool, I can't use my selection (already done with Select tool) and I need to intentionally activate this other tool and do the same selection specifically for Measure Features tool once more (which is time consuming an far less practical).
Measure Feature tool does not allow multiple elements to be selected at once. So if I wanted to know the sum of e. g. 500 features, I would have to select them them 500 times. On the other hand I can select features at once either with Select tool (lasso, line etc.) or Select By Attributes tool (from one layer) and with my idea the summary would be immediately shown. So this workflow would be quite quicker.
Measure Feature tool summarizes any selected feature regardless of which layer it is from. On the other hand when I seek summarization of selected features, I mostly prefer to summarize features from the same layer.

This idea could be also expanded to Selection tab in Contents pane, which shows only sum of features. This tab could be also enriched with additional summary of area/length/volume of selected features for each layer.